LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,   N.  J. 

Presented  by 


BR  85  .D38  1905 

Dawson,  William  James, 

1854- 

1928. 

The  evangelistic  note 

^^  y      0s^-^^^^M 

i^K^N^I 

The  Evangelistic 
Note 


1 6  1923 


BY 

W.  J.  '^Dawson 

Author  of 

The  Reproach  of  Christ,''  "  The  Life  of  Christ s 

"  The  Threshold  of  Manhood,'"  etc. 


New  York 


Chicago 


Toronto 


Fleming  H.   Revell  Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,    1905,  by 
FLEMING  H.   REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  63  Washington  Street 
Toronto  :  27  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London :  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh :      loo     Princes     Street 


THIS  VOLUME 

IS  INSCRIBED  WITH  THE  NAME  OF    THE 

MOST  LOYAL  OF  FBIENDS, 

NEWELL    DWIGHT   HILLIS, 

AND  IS  DEDICATED  TO  HIM, 

AND  THE  GENEBOUS  PEOPLE   OF  PLYMOUTH  CHUBCH,    BROOKLYN, 

AMONG  WHOM  I  FOUND  SO  MUCH 

GRACIOUS  HOSPITALITY  AND  ENCOURAGEMENT, 


AND 
WITH   CONSTANT   GRATITUDE   AND  AFFECTION. 


PKEFACE 

THE  essay  with  which  this  book 
commences  sufficiently  explains  the 
thoughts,  emotions,  and  circumstances 
in  which  the  book  has  found  its  origin. 

The  addresses  which  it  contains  were  in  all 
but  three  instances  delivered  in  the  course  of 
my  mission  at  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn.  As 
they  were  in  the  main  extempore  utterances,  my 
only  way  of  giving  them  permanence  has  been 
to  consult  the  columns  of  the  Brooklyn  Eagle, 
in  which  verbatim  reports  appeared.  I  had  no 
opportunity  of  revising  these  daily  reports,  and 
while  my  hearty  thanks  are  due  to  the  skill  of 
the  reporter,  it  will  be  easily  conceived  that 
many  verbal  errors  and  some  misinterpreta- 
tions of  thought  occurred.  These  errors  and 
misinterpretations  I  have  now  corrected. 
Nevertheless  I  have  thought  it  wise  not  to  alter 
the  form  of  the  addresses.  They  remain  ad- 
dresses ;  they  are  not  essays. 

The  addresses  in  this  volume  which  were  not 
actually  delivered  to  American  audiences  are 
two:  that  upon  "•  Christ  Among  the  Common 
Things  of  Life,''  and  the  address  on  ''  Saving 

7 


8  PREFACE 

Faith. '  *  The  first  was,  however,  printed  in  the 
Brooklyn  Eagle  on  the  day  preceding  the  Ply- 
mouth mission,  and  the  second  touches  a  side  of 
religious  truth  which  is  consonant  with  the 
general  scheme  of  the  book.  I  have  therefore 
included  it  in  preference  to  the  address  de- 
livered at  the  University  of  Chicago,  which 
dealt  with  issues  afterward  treated  more  fully 
in  the  addresses  at  Plymouth  Church. 

The  address  on  ^^  Self -Reservation  ''  was  de- 
livered to  the  students  of  Yale  University, 
New  Haven. 

W.  J.  Dawson. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  The  Evangelistic  Note 11 

II.  The  Social  Significance  of  Christian  Love    .  62 
in.  Our  Duty  to  the  Bystander      ....  83 

IV.  The  Unavoidable  Christ 98 

v.  The  Courage  to  Forget 112 

VI.  The  Ministry  of  Night 128 

VII.  God  Waiting  Man's  Answer        .       .       .       .146 

Vni.    The  Last  Step 164 

IX.       To  the  Uttermost 180 


X.         Sons  of  the  Tabernacle 197 

9 


10  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XI.       The  Seasons  of  the  Soul 215 


XII.      Self-Reservation 


XIII.    Saving  Faith 251 


XIV.     Christ  Among  the  Common  Things  op  Life 


I 

THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 


I  WISH  to  record  some  confessions  and  con- 
victions which  have  led  to  the  publication 
of  this  book,  and  the  movement  which  it 
represents.  In  order  to  do  so  I  must,  first  of 
all,  enter  into  some  details  of  my  own  experi- 
ence during  the  last  three  years. 

In  the  August  of  1902  I  concluded  ten  years 
of  ministry  in  the  Highbury  Quadrant  Church. 
I  had  no  reason  to  be  discouraged  with  the 
nature  or  results  of  my  work  during  these 
years,  and  yet  my  summer  holiday,  which  is 
always  with  me  a  time  of  much  self-examina- 
tion, found  me  both  discouraged  and  dissatis- 
fied. I  was  haunted  with  a  sense  of  unreality 
in  my  work.  I  could  accuse  myself  of  no  stint 
of  labour,  nor  my  people  of  any  visible  decline 
of  interest  in  my  ministry,  but  somehow  things 
had  seemed  to  come  to  a  dead  pause.  I  viewed 
with  dismay  the  coming  years.  Something  was 
clearly  lacking  in  myself  and  in  my  Church,  and 
that  deficient  or  lost  element  was  precisely  the 
element  which  gave  vivacity  to  one's  mind  and 


12         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

vitality  to  one 's  work.  Did  this  perplexing  and 
painful  sense  of  unreality  mean  that  I  had 
reached  the  period  when  my  message  to  my  con- 
gregation was  exhausted?  Had  the  time  come 
when,  for  my  own  sake  and  theirs,  the  separa- 
tion of  the  pastor  and  the  people  had  become 
a  necessity?  Or  did  my  dissatisfaction  imply 
that  any  call  I  once  had  to  the  ministry  was  now 
withdrawn,  and  that  any  work  which  I  could  do 
for  my  fellows  could  henceforth  be  better  ac- 
complished by  the  pen  than  by  the  tongue? 
These  were  some  of  the  questions  which  agi- 
tated me  during  those  weeks  of  quiet  among  the 
hills,  when  I  had  the  leisure  and  the  calm  to  look 
within  my  own  heart,  and  measure  with  sober 
accuracy  the  tendencies  of  my  own  mind. 

To  one,  at  least,  of  these  questions  I  could 
give  a  prompt  reply.  No  change  of  sphere 
could  be  of  real  service  to  me,  for  to  any  sphere 
I  should  carry  the  same  self;  and,  moreover,  it 
was  extremely  unlikely  that  I  should  ever  find 
any  Church  offering  such  various  and  wide  op- 
portunities of  service  as  my  present  Church. 
What  would  it  avail  to  change  my  pulpit  if  I 
could  not  change  myself?  I  might  possibly  at- 
tain some  brief  impulse  begotten  of  novelty, 
some  new  vivacity  of  interest  from  fresh  condi- 
tions, but  this  would  not  serve  me  long.  The 
plain  fact  which  met  me  was  that  if  I  could  not 
do  the  work  of  a  Christian  minister  in  my 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         13 

present  Churcli  I  could  do  it  in  no  Church. 
During  ten  years  of  strenuous  toil  the  Highbury 
Quadrant  Church  had  been  built  up  into  a  won- 
derful series  of  organisations,  which  answered 
every  need  of  the  surrounding  population.  I 
had,  beside  the  ordinary  apparatus  of  the 
Church  work,  a  great  lecture  society,  young 
men's  societies,  gymnastic  clubs,  and  two  la^rge 
missions  among  the  poor,  the  annual  cost  of 
which  exceeded  £1,000.  Here  was  a  mass  of 
perfect  machinery,  capable  of  doing  a  great 
work,  and  the  more  I  reflected  the*  more  certain 
it  seemed  that  I  could  not  replace  this  ma- 
chinery by  any  other  better  adapted  for  the 
tasks  of  a  progressive  Church.  Such  fault  as 
there  was  lay  not  in  lack  of  machinery,  but  in 
deficiency  of  driving  force. 

To  another  of  these  questions  I  could  return  a 
reply  almost  as  positive.  Some  men  are  called 
to  preach  and  some  to  write.  I  had  felt  and 
obeyed  both  of  these  calls  for  twenty  years,  but 
I  could  not  doubt  which  was  the  major  call. 
The  call  to  preach  came  earliest,  and  I  could  not 
believe  it  cancelled.  I  might  find  much  joy  in 
the  ministry  of  the  pen,  but  time  had  taught  me 
that  I  must  look  for  my  highest  efficiency  in 
the  ministry  of  public  speech.  I  might  be  a 
reluctant  prophet,  but  nevertheless  woe  was 
unto  me  if  I  preached  not  the  Gospel.  What- 
ever happened  I  knew  in  my  own  heart  that  I 


14         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

dared  not  relinquish  the  work  of  the  Christian 
ministry. 

A  plain  deduction  remained.  I  must  remain 
where  I  was,  and  I  must  discover  some  way  of 
bringing  myself  and  my  people  into  correspond- 
ence with  my  ideals.  If  any  one  placed  as  I 
was,  and  any  Church  with  so  many  elements  of 
strength,  loyalty,  and  popularity  as  my  own, 
could  not  do  the  work  of  Christ  among  the  peo- 
ple, it  was  hopeless  to  expect  success  in  any 
other  direction.  But  where  did  the  fault  lie? 
What  was  the  cause  of  hindrance  ?  What  miss- 
ing element  robbed  all  this  great  expenditure 
of  force  of  its  legitimate  efficiency?  And  that 
was  just  the  question  which  I  could  not  answer. 

The  answer  came  suddenly,  and  from  a  to- 
tally unexpected  quarter. 

In  the  March  of  1903  I  was  invited  to  read  a 
paper  at  the  National  Free  Church  Council  held 
at  Brighton.  I  had  previously  spoken  at  great 
mass  meetings  of  the  Council,  but  I  had  never 
attended  its  sessions.  For  the  first  time  I  did 
so  at  Brighton.  What  were  my  impressions? 
The  chief  was  the  new  atmosphere  of  spiritual 
warmth  in  which  I  found  myself.  I  had  grown 
cold  through  isolation ;  in  fellowship  I  found  the 
thrill  of  new,  warm  life.  The  sessions  were  re- 
markable for  an  ever-deepening  tone  of  spir- 
itual life  and  power.  Dr.  Horton  preached 
a  sermon  which  profoundly  moved  me.     The 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE  15 

voice  of  confidence  and  conquest  was  in  the  air. 
The  climax  came  in  the  middle  of  the  week, 
when  a  midnight  meeting  was  arranged.  On 
that  memorable  night  the  members  of  the  Coun- 
cil, a  thousand  strong,  marched  through  the 
streets  of  Brighton  gathering  in  the  waifs  and 
wastrels  of  the  streets,  collecting  the  drunkards, 
picking  up  the  sons  and  daughters  of  vice,  and 
finally  returned  to  the  Dome  at  Brighton  an 
hour  before  midnight  with  such  a  congregation 
as  I  had  never  seen.  Gipsy  Smith  gave  the  ad- 
dress. It  was  simple,  masculine,  moving,  and 
entirely  free  from  sensationalism.  He  pleaded 
with  the  lost  and  weary  then  and  there  to  give 
themselves  to  Christ.  At  the  close  of  the  ad- 
dress I  saw  what  I  had  not  seen  since  I  was  a 
boy  in  Cornwall,  scores  of  men  and  women 
rising  for  prayer,  and  pouring  into  an  extem- 
porised inquiry-room  to  seek  instant  deliver- 
ance from  their  sins.  And  then  I  knew  what 
was  the  missing  element  in  my  own  ministry, 
what  was  the  vital  deficiency  in  my  own  Church. 
It  was  evangelistic  fervour,  the  spirit  of  the 
Christian  propaganda. 

I  returned  to  my  Church  and  my  work  con- 
scious of  a  subtle  change  in  myself,  which  af- 
fected every  fibre  of  my  thought.  I  could  not 
then,  I  cannot  now,  explain  that  change.  Noth- 
ing was  altered,  and  yet  everything  was  trans- 
formed.   Something  new  was  at  work  in  me, 


16         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

something  that  spoke  in  the  very  tones  of  my 
voice,  a  power  that  subdued  me  and  breathed 
through  me.  One  supreme  thought  possessed 
me — only  by  the  power  of  a  living  evangelism 
could  my  ministry  and  my  Church  be  henceforth 
justified.  To  introduce  that  power  into  such  a 
Church  as  mine  might  make  or  break  it.  I  had 
no  desire  to  discard  institutions  which  had 
grown  up  with  the  life  of  the  Church.  Could  I 
then  retain  all  I  had,  but  add  the  programme  of 
passionate  evangelistic  effort?  How  far  would 
my  people  respond  to  the  new  note?  I  did  not 
know,  but  I  felt  I  must  take  the  risk.  And  as  it 
turned  out  there  was  no  risk.  Wlien  the 
proposition  was  made  that  Gipsy  Smith  should 
hold  a  mission  at  the  Quadrant  there  was  a 
response  which  surprised  me.  There  was  a 
deeper  current  of  spiritual  passion  running  un- 
der the  polished  surface  of  normal  Church  life 
than  I  had  ever  imagined.  That  all  my  people 
were  in  active  sympathy  I  cannot  affirm ;  human 
nature  being  what  it  is,  that  was  not  to  be  ex- 
pected. The  idea  was  new,  and  had  to  be 
assimilated.  But  the  mere  suggestion  of  a 
mission  evoked  such  wonderful  results,  such  a 
manifestation  of  zeal  among  the  people,  such  a 
quickening  of  spiritual  interest,  that  I  could  not 
doubt  that  I  was  moving  on  the  path  of  God's 
will.  For  weeks  before  the  mission  was  held 
the  mission  had  really  begun ;  and  so  much  was 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         17 

this  the  case  that  had  no  mission  been  held  the 
Church  would  nevertheless  have  been  trans- 
formed in  spirit  and  ideal. 

The  story  of  the  mission  itself  I  related  in  the 
press  at  the  time,  and  need  not  repeat  here ;  but 
on  its  most  remarkable  feature  some  comment  is 
required.  That  feature  was  the  sudden  revela- 
tion of  the  awful  tragedy  of  life  in  the  im- 
mediate neighbourhood  of  the  church,  of  which 
no  one  had  been  conscious.  Pagan  London  in- 
deed lay  at  the  very  church  door — the  London 
of  godless  wealth,  abominable  vice,  helpless 
poverty,  dr^mkenness,  crime,  lust,  and  misery. 
Into  my  church,  with  all  its  associations  of  cul- 
tured worship,  there  swept  on  a  given  night  a 
mass  of  men  and  women  far  more  hopeless  and 
depraved  than  those  that  made  the  midnight 
audience  in  the  Dome  at  Brighton.  We  also 
went  out  to  seek  the  lost,  and  the  lost  were  there 
because  we  fetched  them.  My  people,  my  dea- 
cons and  workers,  a  thousand  strong,  marched 
at  midnight,  and  gathered  from  the  gutters  and 
the  public-houses  a  vast  congregation  of  those 
for  whose  souls  no  man  had  cared.  And  just  as 
I  had  discovered  a  spiritual  readiness  among 
my  own  people  which  I  had  never  suspected,  so 
now  I  found  a  response  to  the  call  of  Christ 
among  the  lowest  of  the  people  which  both 
thrilled  and  amazed  me.  Not  one  of  the 
workers   who  entered  the  public-houses  .that 


18         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

night  received  a  single  word  of  insult.  The 
keepers  of  the  lowest  lodging-houses  persuaded 
their  unhappy  inmates  to  come  with  us.  The 
whole  neighbourhood  was  moved.  Astonishment 
reigned  supreme.  And  I  am  still  astonished  as 
I  reflect  upon  it  all.  I  am  astonished  to  know 
how  easy  it  is  to  get  the  people  if  you  really 
want  them.  I  am  yet  more  astonished  at  the 
miraculous  way  in  which  a  single  spark  of  en- 
thusiasm for  souls,  once  kindled,  is  able  to  pass 
like  a  flame  through  a  great  Church,  and  set  it 
moving  in  a  crusade  of  love,  pity,  and  human 
service. 

When  the  mission  itself  closed  the  greatest 
problem  of  all  remained :  could  I,  and  could  my 
Church,  continue  in  this  line  of  development? 
There  was  only  one  reply  possible:  we  had 
walked  in  Christ's  way,  and  we  dared  not  de- 
part from  it.  As  the  mission  really  began  be- 
fore Gipsy  Smith  did  his  great  work  among  us, 
so  it  has  continued  for  the  twelve  months  since 
his  departure.  Every  Thursday  night  I  have 
held  an  evangelistic  service,  and  some  of  the 
results  at  these  services  have  been  more  aston- 
ishing than  anything  which  happened  in  the 
week  of  the  mission.  The  chief  of  these  is  the 
work  done  among  fallen  women.  These  un- 
happy creatures  came  to  the  Thursday  services 
in  twos  and  threes  week  after  week,  and,  ac- 
cording to  our  power  and  opportunity,  we  have 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         19 

dealt  with  their  cases.  Some  we  have  failed  to 
rescue,  but  I  can  count  several  who  have  found 
their  way  back  to  purity,  one  of  whom  is  to-day 
a  teacher  in  a  Sunday-school.  Drunkards  have 
come  to  sign  the  pledge,  despairing  men  to  con- 
fess their  sins.  The  work  of  evangelism  has 
never  ceased,  nor  is  there  the  least  sign  of  di- 
minished interest.  Nor  has  the  work  been  con- 
fined merely  to  a  class.  The  thoughtful  and  the 
cultured  have  also  felt  the  power  of  the  new 
impulse.  The  very  atmosphere  of  the  Church 
is  so  changed  that  those  who  knew  it  half  a 
dozen  years  ago  would  scarcely  recognise  it  to- 
day. Yet  the  leaders  of  the  congregation  are 
substantially  the  same — the  same  but  changed. 
We  have  entered  into  a  heritage  of  joy  by  enter- 
ing into  a  heritage  of  labour.  We  have  got  to 
the  heart  of  sacred  realities.  We  believe  in  the 
power  of  Christ  because  we  see  that  power  at 
work.  The  misery  of  impotence,  which  is  the  I 
torture  of  so  many  ministries  and  the  corrosion  [ 
of  so  many  Churches,  has  gone  for  ever,  and  I 
instead  we  know  the  Gospel  to  be  the  present 
power  of  God  unto  salvation,  and  are  not 
ashamed  of  it. 


So  far  I  have  related  an  experience ;  I  come 
now  to  convictions. 
The   questions   perpetually   debated   in.  my 


20         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

mind  through  those  months  of  joyous  effort 
were  two,  the  first  of  which  was  how  far  the 
normal  Church  could  be  transformed  into  an 
evangelistic  centre;  and  the  second,  how  far 
evangelistic  methods  might  be  included  in  a 
regular  pastorate.  It  is  commonly  asserted 
that  the  mass  of  the  people  will  not  come  into 
churches.  Missions  are  usually  held  in  halls 
for  that  reason.  It  is  further  assumed  that 
there  is  some  irreconcilable  difference  between 
the  minister  and  the  evangelist,  and  a  corre- 
sponding disparity  between  the  ordinary  service 
of  a  worshipping  Church  and  the  service  called 
evangelistic.  I  believe  these  assumptions  to  be 
radically  false,  and  therefore  perilous. 

The  first  may  be  disposed  of  at  once.  The 
example  of  my  own  Church  is  sufficient  to  teach 
that  there  is  no  insuperable  difficulty  in  trans- 
forming the  normal  Church  into  an  evangelistic 
centre.  The  difficulties  in  the  way  are  class 
feeling,  parochialism  of  idea,  and  the  fastidious- 
ness of  a  false  culture.  These  are  serious  dif- 
ficulties, and  more  serious  in  some  Churches 
than  in  others,  according  to  the  tradition  of  the 
Church.  Many  Churches  might  quite  justly  be 
described  as  examples  of  cultivated  parochial- 
ism. They  are  social  clubs,  united  by  moral 
ideals,  rather  than  spiritual  communities  quick 
with  Divine  fire.  Other  Churches  are  frankly 
class  Churches.    The  poor  are  not  wanted,  and 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         21 

are  warned  off.  But  so  far  as  my  own  experi- 
ence goes  this  class  of  Church  is  rare,  although 
in  most  prosperous  churches  of  a  suburban 
character  individuals  will  be  found  who  rep- 
resent these  prejudices.  It  is  useless  to  in- 
veigh against  such  wicked  and  obstinate  perver- 
sions of  sentiment.  The  fact  to  be  reckoned 
with  is  that  the  men  who,  in  their  expressed 
opinions  and  exclusive  temper,  seem  utterly 
hostile  to  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  are  nevertheless 
often  men  of  much  substantial  goodness.  They 
will  give  time  and  money  to  objects  which  com- 
mend themselves  to  their  judgment.  Moreover, 
they  are  in  the  Church,  and  cannot  be  turned  out 
without  violent  disruption  and  some  scandal. 

There  is  a  better  way;  let  such  men  see  for 
themselves  the  actual  work  of  a  mission,  and 
their  prejudices  will  be  dissolved.  These  prej- 
udices are  the  fruit  of  isolation.  They  are 
cured  by  contact  with  actual  facts.  In  all  but 
very  rare  cases  a  man  of  really  sympathetic 
heart  has  only  to  be  brought  face  to  face  with 
human  need  to  realise  that  it  involves  obliga- 
tions. Indeed,  the  real  source  of  deadness  and 
decay  in  many  Churches  is  precisely  the  absence 
of  the  poor.  We  need  a  mingling  of  all  classes 
in  a  Church  for  its  own  sake,  for  a  true  Church 
should  be  a  microcosm  of  the  world  itself,  in 
which  many  kinds  of  men  constitute  the  social 
whole.    It  needs  no  argument  to  prove  that  the 


22         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

organisation  of  wealth  and  culture  for  the  ser- 
vice of  poverty  and  ignorance  is  the  first  of 
Christian  ethics,  and  the  wealthy  and  cultured 
have  more  to  gain  from  it  in  the  heightening 
and  deepening  of  their  own  sympathies  than  the 
poor  and  ignorant  in  the  application  of  those 
sympathies.  We  have  within  our  Churches  at 
the  present  time,  imperfect  as  they  are,  a  force 
sufficient  for  the  Christian  conquest  of  the 
world.  All  that  is  needed  is  to  mobilise  our 
forces.  I  found  so  little  real  difficulty  in  mobi- 
lising the  forces  at  my  disposal  for  evangelistic 
work  that  I  suspect  these  difficulties  are  greatly 
exaggerated  by  timid  men  who  put  upon  the 
traditions  of  a  Church  the  blame  which  really 
belongs  to  themselves.  Given  bold  and  wise 
leadership,  I  believe  that  there  is  no  Church 
that  will  not  hail  the  bugle-note  that  calls  the 
advance. 

As  regards  the  question  of  evangelistic  ef- 
forts in  a  regular  pastorate,  the  difficulty  is  also 
more  imaginary  than  real.  What  is  needed? 
Merely  a  change  of  method — a  simpler  style  of 
address,  a  more  direct  appeal,  a  more  unre- 
strained fervour.  Most  ministers  have  com- 
menced their  ministries  with  evangelism.  That 
which  first  led  them  to  preach  was  a  real  pas- 
sion for  souls.  Let  the  old  man  look  back  far 
enough,  and  he  will  see  a  youth  full  of  warm 
enthusiasm  pleading  with  men  and  women  for 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         23 

their  redemption — a  youth  who  was  once  him- 
self. What  has  changed  him?  Very  often 
nothing  more  than  the  deadening  effect  of  a  con- 
tinuous pastorate.  He  has  come  to  regard  him- 
self rather  as  the  calm  expositor  of  truth  than 
its  impassioned  advocate.  The  note  of  appeal 
has  disappeared,  or  has  been  wilfully  sup- 
pressed. And  although  he  may  not  know  it, 
that  is  the  real  cause  of  the  weariness  he  feels  in 
his  task  as  the  years  advance.  He  grieves  over 
the  lack  of  result,  over  the  deficiency  of  positive 
and  plain  result,  without  perceiving  that  he 
himself  has  made  such  results  impossible.  But 
that  which  a  man  has  once  possessed  can  always 
be  recovered.  He  who  has  been  an  evangelist 
once  can  be  an  evangelist  again,  and  a  much 
more  competent  and  wise  evangelist,  in  the 
ratio  of  his  wider  experience,  if  he  will  allow 
himself  freedom.  For  of  all  the  errors  that 
have  wrought  ruin  to  the  Church  none  has  been 
more  fatal  than  the  tacit  admission  that  the 
work  of  the  minister  is  a  thing  separate  from 
the  work  of  the  evangelist.  It  has  meant  that 
the  minister  has  become  a  vocal  essayist,  and 
evangelism  has  come  to  be  regarded  with  con- 
tempt. It  has  also  meant  that  the  work  of 
evangelism,  being  thus  regarded  as  inferior,  has 
been  left  to  inferior  men — or  let  us  say  to  men 
whose  admirable  zeal  has  not  been  always 
united  with  the  highest  qualities  of  intellect. 


24         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

This  sentence  is  not  meant  to  imply  on  my 
part  the  least  dispraise  of  the  existing  evan- 
gelist. I  owe  too  much  to  such  a  man  as  Gipsy 
Smith  ever  to  allow  myself  to  speak  in  any 
terms  but  those  of  gratitude  of  men  who,  like 
himself,  spend  their  lives  in  the  arduous  worE 
of  conducting  special  missions.  But  the  ques- 
tion in  my  mmd  is  this.  Is  the  gift  of  the  evan- 
gelist so  unique  that  it  cannot  be  expected  in  the 
average  minister!  I  cannot  admit  that  it  is. 
The  power  of  the  evangelist  usually  lies  not  so 
much  in  superiority  of  gift  as  in  superior  ear- 
nestness, manifesting  itself  in  great  directness 
of  appeal  and  a  positive  belief  in  immediate  re- 
sults. And,  if  that  be  the  case,  it  is  clear  that  it 
is  a  gift  within  the  reach  of  most  of  us.  If  we 
have  it  not,  it  is  because  we  have  not  sought  to 
possess  it.  We  have  not  made  it  our  business 
to  save  souls.  We  have  not  studied  the  art  of 
persuasion.  We  have  been  content  with  some 
other  function,  more  agreeable  to  our  taste, 
which  we  have  vainly  imagined  more  important. 
Hence  we  have  come  to  regard  the  evangelist 
as  an  expert  in  a  branch  of  spiritual  science 
which  really  belongs  to  the  mere  alphabet  of 
our  own  calling  as  ministers.  Expert  in  win- 
ning souls  the  evangelist  may  be,  and  let  us 
thankfully  acknowledge  his  gift ;  but  the  minis- 
ter in  his  regular  pastorate  should  be  an  expert 
too ;  and  if  he  be  not,  nor  seeks  to  be,  it  may  be 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         25 

gravely  doubted  whether  he  is  not  false  to  his 
high  vocation  as  the  ambassador  of  Christ. 

And  so,  following  the  course  of  this  debate  in 
my  own  mind,  the  conclusion  seemed  plain  that 
I  could  not  exonerate  myself  if  I  refused  the 
work  of  the  evangelist.  I  might  perform  it  im- 
perfectly, but  I  was  bound  to  attempt  it.  I  had 
much  to  learn,  and  a  new  method  to  acquire, 
but  the  only  way  to  learn  how  to  preach  is  by 
preaching.  And  from  this  conviction  which 
concerned  myself  I  passed  to  another  of  more 
general  application.  All  things  being  equal, 
the  man  best  fitted  for  evangelism  was  the  man 
who  brought  to  the  work  the  ripest  mind  and 
widest  culture.  There  is  no  valid  reason  why 
culture  and  evangelism  should  be  treated  as 
opposites.  They  were  united  in  Wesley,  they 
were  united  in  Henry  Drummond.  The  greater 
the  intellectual  equipment,  always  provided  it 
is  united  with  faith  and  fervour,  the  greater 
will  be  the  success  of  the  evangelist.  In  an  age 
of  education  there  is  surely  room  for  an  evan- 
gelism that  can  speak  equally  to  the  cultured 
and  the  illiterate;  an  evangelism  which  knows 
how  to  assimilate  the  best  results  of  knowledge 
without  losing  the  simplicity  of  faith;  an  evan- 
gelism which  understands  that  the  real  em- 
phasis of  Christian  truth  lies  where  it  has 
always  lain,  not  in  the  contentions  of  Biblical 
criticism,  but  in  those  eternal  verities  of  faith 


26         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

and  experience  which  no  criticism  can  destroy, 
or  even  impugn. 

At  this  point  it  is  probable  that  I  may  give 
offence  to  some  good  men  who  appear  to  im- 
agine that  it  is  impossible  for  any  effective 
spiritual  zeal  to  be  found  in  combination  with  a 
liberal  theology.  I  admit  that  a  liberal  the- 
ology has  often  been  associated  rather  with 
social  than  spiritual  zeal.  In  the  effort  to  at- 
tain theological  sanity  religious  teachers  have 
often  passed  into  the  cold  realm  of  a  bar- 
ren intellectualism.  The  inference  is  perhaps 
natural  that  liberal  theology  implies  decay  of 
spiritual  passion;  but  there  is  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  things  to  make  this  disaster  inevita- 
ble. The  whole  question  is  very  largely  one  of 
emphasis.  For  my  own  part  I  cannot  admit 
that  it  is  necessary  to  close  one's  eyes  to  all  the 
splendid  and  reverent  work  of  our  greatest 
Biblical  critics  in  order  to  retain  a  vision  of  the 
Cross  of  Christ.  There  may  have  been  two 
Isaiahs,  or  twenty ;  what  has  that  to  do  with  me 
so  long  as  I  have  the  profound  spiritual  mes- 
sage contained  in  the  book  which  bears  the 
name  of  Isaiah?  I  am  wisely  indifferent 
whether  Bacon  or  Shakespeare  wrote  ^'  Ham- 
let," so  long  as  I  have  ''  Hamlet  '';  and  who 
would  insist  that  a  certain  critical  view  of  the 
authorship  of  "  Hamlet  '^  is  imperative  before 
one  should  be  allowed  to  expound  the  teachings 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         27 

of  the  drama  1  The  critic  does  his  work,  well  or 
ill,  as  the  case  may  be;  I  may  accept  or  reject 
his  views,  but  the  message  of  the  book  is  still 
mine.  In  the  same  way  I  take  the  ground  that 
it  is  a  mistake  in  emphasis  for  an  evangelist  to 
make  some  particular  view  of  verbal  inspiration 
or  the  Book  of  Jonah  a  sine  qua  non  of  his 
message.  Such  questions  do  not  belong  to 
him,  and  are  usually  outside  his  competence. 
He  injures  his  influence,  especially  with  the 
thoughtful  men,  by  obtruding  them.  The  plain 
fact,  as  it  appears  to  me,  is  that  these  matters 
have  no  relation  to  the  Gospel  of  Evangelism. 
The  evangelist's  concern  is  with  the  great 
spiritual  facts  of  sin,  penitence,  and  redemp- 
tion ;  his  battlefield  is  the  human  will ;  his  mes- 
sage is  the  love  and  judgment  of  God ;  his  work 
is  the  practical  work  of  winning  men  for  Christ. 
Let  him  keep  to  his  own  ground,  and  he  is 
strong.  He  has  too  much  to  preach  that  is  be- 
yond all  debate  to  trouble  himself,  or  perplex 
his  hearers,  by  meddling  with  questions  on 
which  he  cannot  pretend  to  speak  with  intel- 
lectual authority. 

The  time  has  clearly  come  for  liberal  theology 
to  justify  itself  in  the  eyes  of  the  people,  if  it 
can,  for  the  people  are  weary  of  negations. 
Can  liberal  theology  justify  itself?  It  can  do 
so  in  one  way  only,  by  showing  its  capacity  for 
spiritual  zeal.    For  liberal  theology  has  also 


28         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

been  guilty  of  wrong  emphasis.  It  has  em- 
phasised its  doubts  rather  than  its  faiths.  It 
has  been  destructive  of  error,  but  not  construc- 
tive of  truth.  It  has  told  people  what  to  reject, 
but  not  what  to  believe.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  it  is  distrusted  by  people  who,  above  all 
things,  crave  a  positive  faith ;  yet  it  has  a  faith, 
a  real  and  deep  faith,  founded  on  a  real  spiritual 
experience,  if  it  would  but  have  the  courage  to 
declare  it.  When  to  its  deep  knowledge  liberal 
theology  adds  the  burning  faith  begotten  of 
vital  spiritual  experience,  it  will  become  the 
greatest  power  for  evangelism  that  the  world 
has  ever  known. 

So,  then,  the  conviction  has  grown  in  me  that 
though  much  has  been  shaken  in  the  realm  of 
thought,  nothing  is  shaken  in  the  world  of  ex- 
perience; the  kingdom  of  spiritual  fact  abides. 
I  hold  to  the  old  evangelical  message,  although 
for  me  the  shibboleth  of  utterance  may  differ. 
I  find  myself  at  home  in  a  Salvation  Army  meet- 
ing, because  I  find  there  the  vital  knowledge  of 
God's  dealings  with  the  soul  and  the  expression 
of  a  religious  experience  which  is  as  old  as  the 
Cross.  My  mind  concentrates  itself  more  and 
more  on  positive  truth,  and  my  effort  as  a  min- 
ister of  Christ  on  the  efficiency  of  the  accom- 
plished purpose.  I  am  much  more  concerned 
to  save  one  harlot  from  her  shame,  one  drunk- 
ard from  his  folly,  one  prodigal  son  from  the 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE  29 

defilement  of  the  far  country,  than  to  discuss 
those  speculations  about  truth  which,  after  all, 
interest  but  a  few  and  are  not  helpful  even  to 
them.  Life  is  growing  short ;  let  it  be  my  busi- 
ness, though  I  am  the  slave  of  no  man,  to  make 
myself  the  slave  of  all  men,  if  by  any  means  I 
can  save  some.  For  this  I  know,  that  the  power 
of  Christ  does  still  save  men,  and  this  is  as 
much  knowledge  as  I  need  for  the  work  of  the 
evangel.  This  is  the  one  essential  creed,  and 
nothing  else  greatly  matters. 

This  is  the  essential  creed,  but  in  its  full  ex- 
pression there  is  room  for  every  faculty  of  the 
mind.  Nothing  is  more  needed  in  the  evangel- 
istic sermon  than  sound  fundamental  brain- 
work.  Such  a  sermon  should  have  superior  and 
outstanding  qualities  of  its  own,  such  as  pun- 
gency, directness,  cogency  of  appeal,  force  of 
persuasion,  but  it  will  never  influence  the 
thoughtful  unless  it  has  sound  fundamental 
brain-work.  The  evangelist  will  gain  im- 
mensely in  power  by  being  also  a  thinker. 
This  is  one  of  the  lessons  of  Wesley's  life 
which  has  been  strangely  overlooked.  It  is 
a  lesson  that  we  have  to  re-learn.  Wesley 
was  a  clear  and  very  logical  thinker  and,  from 
the  merely  intellectual  point  of  view,  a  great 
preacher,  yet  he  was  the  greatest  of  evangel- 
ists. Can  we  refuse  the  deduction  that  evan- 
gelism has  everything  to  gain  and  nothing  to 


30         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

lose  by  the  closest  possible  alliance  with  cul- 
ture? And,  in  the  conditions  of  our  own  time, 
with  its  constantly  rising  standard  of  educa- 
tion, is  not  the  union  of  culture  with  evangelism 
absolutely  necessary  if  evangelism  is  once  more 
to  become  a  national  force  1 

in 

Upon  this  branch  of  the  theme  I  may  add 
some  observations  of  a  practical  nature. 

I  have  already  said  that  it  is  commonly  as- 
sumed that  the  masses  of  the  people  have  a 
rooted  aversion  to  churches,  and  therefore  for 
the  purposes  of  a  great  mission  some  secular 
ground  should  be  chosen,  such  as  a  public  hall, 
a  theatre,  or  a  building  especially  erected  for 
the  mission.     I  do  not  for  a  moment  ques- 
tion the  fact  that  it  is  much  easier  to  get 
the  masses  of  the  people  to  come  together  in  a 
hall  than  a  church.     There  is  a  sense  of  free- 
dom in  a  hall,  an  equality,  an  absence  of  re- 
straint not  found  in  a  church.    People  can  sit 
where  they  please,  whereas  in  a  church,  whose 
hundreds  of  pews  are  labelled  with  the  names 
of  individual  proprietors,  there  is  a  sense  of 
intrusion.      There  is  also  a  sense  of  novelty 
about  religious  services  in  a  secular  building. 
Were  I  conducting  a  mission  in  a  great  city  I 
should  for  many  reasons  prefer  a  public  hall, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  the  experience  of  most 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         31 

evangelists    would    point    toward    the    same 
choice. 

But  I  am  now  pleading  for  normal  evangel- 
ism, the  transformation  of  the  existing  church 
into  an  evangelistic  centre,  and  this,  of  course, 
implies  the  use  of  the  church  itself  for  the  work. 
Is  it  really  true  that  the  mass  of  the  people  have 
an  aversion  to  the  church  so  strong  and  ob- 
stinate that  you  must  provide  some  other  build- 
ing for  them  if  you  wish  to  attract  them?  I  do 
not  believe  it.  My  own  experience  disproves 
the  assumption.  During  the  last  twelve  months 
representatives  of  almost  every  grade  of  soci- 
ety, from  the  man  of  culture  to  the  street 
vagrant,  have  entered  my  church.  The  real 
reason  why  ^  ^  the  man  in  the  street  ' '  hesitates 
to  enter  a  church  is  that  he  thinks  he  will  not 
be  welcome  in  it.  Show  him  that  he  is  welcome, 
and  his  hesitation  vanishes.  What  he  most 
dreads  is  intrusion.  He  is  morbidly  sensitive 
to  the  least  slight.  Nothing  offends  him  so 
deeply  as  the  conduct  of  some  selfish  pewholder, 
who  shows  resentment  or  contemptuous  toler- 
ance of  his  presence.  The  great  thing,  there- 
fore, is  to  make  him  feel  that  the  church  is  his ; 
that  it  exists  for  him;  that  it  was  built  for  his 
use ;  that  he  is  thoroughly  welcome  in  it.  In  a 
Catholic  cathedral  the  rich  and  poor  meet  as 
sharers  of  an  equal  right.  No  one  need  offer 
an  apology  for  using  a  building  that  is  his  by 


32         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

right.  Our  great  Protestant  sanctuaries  should 
occupy  the  same  position  in  public  thought. 
When  they  are  thus  administered  as  buildings 
erected  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people,  there 
is  no  difficulty  in  attracting  the  people  to  them. 

What  is  the  great  end  of  a  mission?  It  is 
not  only  to  redeem  men  for  Christ,  but  it  is  to 
bring  them  into  active  union  with  the  organised 
Church  of  Christ.  It  is  something,  therefore, 
first  of  all,  to  familiarise  them  with  church 
buildings.  A  mission  in  a  public  hall  has  great 
immediate  advantages,  but  if  missions  are  to  be 
held  only  in  public  halls  is  not  the  impression 
created  that  there  is  some  element  about  the 
ordinary  church  building  which  is  antagonistic 
to  mission  enterprise!  Does  not  the  very  suc- 
cess of  the  hall  injure  the  Church?  It  seems  to 
me  that  one  of  the  most  serious  faults  in  modern 
evangelism  is  that  it  often  creates  an  im- 
pression of  antagonism  to  the  normal  Church. 
The  evangelist  frequently  permits  himself  to 
attack  the  Church,  its  services,  its  institutions, 
its  ministers.  He  forgets  that  any  real  results 
of  his  work  must  be  harvested  by  the  normal 
Church.  His  business  is  at  least  to  work  with 
the  ordinary  ministers  in  heartiest  sympathy, 
and  even  when  he  finds  little  answering  sym- 
pathy to  be  magnanimous  enough  to  refrain 
from  attack.  And  since,  in  the  long  run,  the 
steady  drudging  work  of  religious  regeneration 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE  33 

must  be  done  by  the  Churches  themselves,  it  is 
manifest  that  the  closer  the  association  between 
the  Church  and  the  Mission  the  better.  All 
things  being  equal,  except  in  the  case  of  great 
united  missions  in  great  cities,  the  mission  held 
in  a  church  is  likely  to  have  more  durable  re- 
sults than  the  mission  held  in  a  hall.  It  has  the 
great  initial  advantage  of  familiarising  the  peo- 
ple with  the  church.  Nothing  so  breaks  down 
prejudice  against  a  church  which  has  been  re- 
garded as  exclusive  or  aristocratic  as  a  mission 
which  gathers  within  its  walls  all  classes  of  the 
community  and  leaves  with  them  memories  of 
good  which  go  far  to  sanctify  in  their  regard  the 
building  itself. 

Besides  this,  there  is  a  very  practical  aspect 
of  this  matter.  Here  we  have  throughout  the 
land  thousands  of  magnificent  buildings,  spaci- 
ous, costly,  and  equipped  for  a  certain  work,, 
and  what  possible  justification  can  there  be 
for  deserting  these  buildings  when  we  make  a 
special  effort  to  reach  the  people — except  that 
of  inadequate  accommodation!  These  build- 
ings represent  millions  of  money  and  great 
generosity  and  self-sacrifice;  are  they  after  all 
only  so  many  costly  mistakes  1  They  were  built 
for  the  glory  of  God  in  the  salvation  of  men ;  let 
them  therefore  be  used  for  this  supreme  end. 
They  are  costly  mistakes,  indeed,  if  they  are  too 
fine  or  too  elaborate  or  too  sacro-sanct  in  the 


34         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

eyes  of  their  custodians  for  the  purpose  of  an 
evangelistic  service. 

Certain  good  friends  of  mine  have  occasion- 
ally said  to  me  during  the  last  year,  ' '  But  why 
can't  you  be  content  to  gather  these  poor  people 
into  your  mission-halls,  instead  of  bringing 
them  into  the  Quadrant  Church!  We  have  two 
mission-halls  in  poor  neighbourhoods,  espe- 
cially built  and  maintained  for  these  people; 
surely  they  would  be  more  at  home  there!  '' 
Here  is  another  mistake,  or  rather  a  whole 
series  of  mistakes.  For  the  poor  people  do  not 
prefer  the  small  mission-hall.  They  also  are 
sensitive,  and  are  especially  sensitive  to  the 
idea  of  condescension  implied  in  a  little  special 
hall  set  aside  for  their  use.  Strange  as  it  may 
seem,  yet  they  are  very  like  other  folk  in  prefer- 
ring a  great  church  with  a  crowd  of  people,  and 
all  the  stimulus  of  the  crowd,  to  a  little  hall  with 
a  handful  of  people.  ^They  like  the  better  music, 
the  organ,  the  full  choir,  the  good  soloist,  the 
stir  and  animation  of  the  big  assembly.  And 
they  like  the  best  kind  of  preaching,  as  long  as 
it  is  simple  enough  to  be  apprehended  by  them. 
You  cannot  preach  too  well  for  poor  folk.  If 
the  mass  is  to  be  won,  it  will  only  be  by  giving 
them  the  very  best  we  have.  I  am  so  sure  of 
this,  that  I  believe  the  day  of  the  little  mission- 
hall  is  over.  We  do  but  waste  our  money  and 
our  effort  by  maintaining  a  series  of  small  halls 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         35 

in  the  crowded  localities  of  our  great  cities. 
The  wiser  and  much  the  more  economical  policy 
is  to  use  our  great  churches  as  the  great  centres 
of  all  our  missionary  effort.  Instead  of  dis- 
persing power  over  a  ring  of  struggling  mis- 
sion-halls, concentrate  power  on  the  mother 
Church  itself.  And  in  doing  this  the  Church 
itself  gets  a  new  quickening.  It  becomes  more 
vital  by  the  element  of  variety  in  its  composi- 
tion and  in  its  services. 

'^  Well,''  people  say,  ^'  but  the  big  church 
means  a  big  expense ;  it  means  a  constant  appeal 
for  money,  and  the  outsider,  attracted  into  a 
church  by  a  mission,  does  not  want  to  be  im- 
portuned for  money.  He  usually  wants  every- 
thing for  nothing.''  This  is  not  only  an  error, 
it  is  a  libel.  It  was  disproved  during  my  own 
special  mission.  There  was  a  collection  at 
every  service,  and  in  ten  days  the  people 
gave  £340.  It  was  especially  disproved  at 
one  of  these  services,  consisting  of  men  only, 
convened  on  a  Sunday  afternoon.  It  was 
a  great  promiscuous  audience  gathered  to- 
gether by  a  band  and  a  parade  in  the  streets. 
My  cautious  friends  said  to  me,  '  ^  You  had  bet- 
ter not  ask  them  for  a  collection.  They  won't 
like  it."  I  rose  and  said,  '^  You  are  mostly 
working-men,  and  the  working-man  usually 
likes  to  pay  for  anything  he  values.  I  shall  not 
ask  you  for  a  collection  if  you  don't  want  one. 


36  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

Will  you  have  a  collection?  "  They  at  once 
responded  ''  Aye/'  and  the  collection  was  £10. 
The  error  has  been  disproved  since  in  my 
weekly  Evangelistic  Services.  I  have  taken  a 
collection  every  Thursday  night,  simply  ex- 
plaining that  I  looked  to  the  people  interested 
in  evangelism  to  support  it,  and  no  one  has 
raised  the  least  objection.  There  may  be  many 
reasons  which  keep  the  masses  out  of  church, 
but  certainly  the  collection  is  not  one  of 
them. 

I  hold,  therefore,  that  the  existing  Church 
has  all  the  equipment  for,  and  should  be  the 
scene  of,  the  new  evangelism.  Once  more  I  re- 
peat that  it  is  the  mobilisation  of  the  existing 
forces  that  we  want.  We  have  treated  our 
churches,  especially  when  composed  of  people 
of  culture  and  social  competence,  too  much  as 
schools  of  spiritual  and  moral  culture,  too  little 
as  the  training  grounds  of  an  army  bent  on  con- 
quest. The  time  has  come  to  close  the  book  on 
tactics  and  gird  on  the  sword.  We  know  all 
about  the  theory  of  warfare;  we  have  now  to 
take  the  field.  We  have  talked  much,  and 
wisely;  let  us  now  act,  and  bravely.  We  are 
gathered  into  churches  not  to  get  good  for  our- 
selves only,  but  to  do  good  to  others.  The  time 
has  come  when  every  efficient  in  the  regiments 
of  Christ  should  answer  to  his  Captain's  call, 
march  out  of  the  barrack-yard,  and  attempt  the 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         37 

work  of  conquest.  For  of  all  armies,  it  is  true, 
as  was  said  of  Caesar's  legions,  ^'  armies  exist 
only  by  always  fighting,  and  conquest  comes  of 
conquering. ' ' 

IV 

I  have  already  touched,  in  a  fugitive  fashion, 
upon  some  of  the  qualities  that  should  inhere  in 
an  evangelistic  sermon,  such  as  superior  power 
of  pungency  or  appeal ;  but  the  whole  matter  is 
much  too  important  for  cursory  treatment.  If 
we  grant  that  normal  evangelism  is  both  pos- 
sible and  desirable,  the  question  at  once  arises 
in  the  mind  of  the  ordinary  minister,  as  it  did 
in  mine, '  ^  What  am  I  to  do  to  fit  myself  for  this 
type  of  ministry?  "  The  main  answer  can  be 
given  at  once :  Seek  a  deeper  spiritual  life,  that 
you  may  be  the  channel  of  a  new  spiritual 
power.  The  great  temptation  of  all  ministers, 
and  particularly  of  those  of  unusual  intellectual 
gifts,  is  to  rely  rather  on  the  efficiency  of  intel- 
lectual gift  for  success  than  upon  the  direct  and 
vitalising  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  This  trans- 
ference of  faith  from  the  mystic  and  Divine  ele- 
ment, which  lies  at  the  back  of  all  religious 
consciousness,  to  the  positive  and  plain  process 
of  ideas  by  which  religious  consciousness  is  in- 
terpreted, is  in  many  men  unconscious.  The 
making  of  a  sermon,  being  a  form  of  intellectual 
activity  constantly  repeated,  in  course  of  time 


38         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

comes  to  be  regarded  as  an  intellectual  process 
only.  With  many  men  it  cannot  even  be  said 
that  there  is  any  transference  of  faith  in  the 
power  of  the  mystic  element  to  the  power  of  the 
intellectual,  because  the  first  has  never  really 
existed  for  them.  They  have  never  learnt  to 
attach  the  least  definite  meaning  to  the  promise 
of  Christ  that  the  Holy  Ghost  should  give  the 
disciples  utterance  according  to  their  need; 
which  implies  that  behind  the  preacher  there  is 
a  power,  not  himself,  that  uses  him  as  its  chan- 
nel. The  entire  training  of  a  modern  minister 
represses,  if  it  does  not  contradict  this  concep- 
tion. By  the  time  a  prolonged  college  course  is 
finished,  an  abiding  impression  is  often  created 
in  the  mind  of  a  young  minister  that  to  be 
amply  furnished  with  intellectual  weapons  for 
his  task  is  to  be  completely  equipped.  This  im- 
pression is  probably  fostered  and  deepened  by 
the  temper  of  the  Church  to  which  he  ministers. 
He  is  led  to  suppose  by  the  comments  made 
upon  his  sermons,  and  by  the  kind  of  praise 
lavished  upon  any  sermon  of  unusual  intel- 
lectual brilliance,  that  the  people  are  entirely 
satisfied  with  the  kind  of  discourse  which  does 
little  more  than  display  his  own  gifts  and 
gratify  their  culture.  Thus  the  sense  of  any- 
thing mystic  which  lies  behind  the  function  of 
preaching,  any  prophetic  vision  directly  com- 
municated and  revealed,  gradually  dies  away. 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE  39 

He  speaks  his  own  mind,  and  no  doubt  helpfully 
to  others;  but  he  does  not  speak  the  mind 
of  God,  as  one  who  is  moved  by  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

Yet  nothing  can  be  plainer  than  that  in  all 
great  and  successful  evangelistic  ministries 
there  has  been  an  element  of  power  totally  dis- 
tinct from  intellectual  gift.  It  may  embrace 
the  noblest  intellectual  gifts — have  I  not  al- 
ready argued  that  the  fuller  the  intellectual 
equipment,  the  better  fitted  is  any  man  for  evan- 
gelism!— but  it  is  distinct  from  it.  There  is, 
for  example,  a  most  suggestive  description  of 
the  preaching  of  Francis  of  Assisi  which  has 
often  impressed  me.  Thomas  of  Spoleto,  who 
heard  him  preach  in  the  Piazza  at  Bologna  in 
1220,  expresses  his  wonder  at  finding  so  many 
learned  men  filled  with  admiration  of  so  plain  a 
man.  For,  says  Thomas,  in  what  is  evidently  a 
painful  effort  to  comprehend  a  phenomenon  too 
difficult  for  him,  ^ '  he  had  not  the  manners  of  a 
preacher :  his  ways  were  rather  those  of  conver- 
sation. His  apparel  was  poor,  his  person  in 
no  respect  imposing.  His  face  was  not  at  all 
handsome;  yet  God  gave  such  great  efficacy 
to  his  words  that  he  brought  back  to  peace  and 
harmony  many  nobles  whose  savage  fury  had 
not  stopped  short  of  the  spilling  of  blood.'' 
''  God  gave  efficacy  to  his  words,"  here 
Thomas  surprised  the  true  secret  of  Francis, 


40         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

and  of  all  great  evangelists.  One  does  well  to 
meditate  also  on  that  other  illuminative  sentence 
of  Thomas — '^  he  had  not  the  manners  of  a 
preacher:  his  ways  were  rather  those  of  con- 
versation." Thomas  evidently  expected  from 
so  famous  a  man  cultivated  oratory,  and  he 
found  instead  a  man  entirely  simple  in  speech, 
who  went  to  the  point  at  once,  and  knew  how  to 
get  there.  For  entire  simplicity  in  speech  is 
only  possible  when  we  have  ceased  to  think  of 
ourselves.  Self-consciousness,  which  is  really 
a  subtle  form  of  pride  and  vanity,  is  the  ruin  of 
ministers.  But  when  a  minister  becomes  so 
much  aware  of  a  Divine  power  uttering  itself 
through  him  that  he  yields  himself  wholly  to  it, 
his  message  naturally  becomes  so  much  more  to 
him  than  the  form  of  its  utterance,  that  he 
attains  by  intuition  that  convincing  note  of  sim- 
plicity, sincerity,  and  earnestness  which  alone 
is  able  to  move  and  mould  great  masses  of  men. 

"  Oft,  when  the  Word  is  on  me  to  deliver, 
Opens  the  heaven,  and  the  Lord  is  there. 

Then  with  a  rush  the  intolerable  craving 
Shivers  throughout  me  like  a  trumpet-call, — 

Oh  to  save  these !  to  perish  for  their  saving. 
Die  for  their  life,  be  offered  for  them  all. " 

But  the  Word  must  be  on  a  man,  a  Divine 
burden,  a  pressure  and  a  potency,  an  inrushing 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         41 

tide  from  an  infinite  deep,  that  floods  Ms  own 
heart  and  life  to  the  depths,  before  he  can  attain 
either  the  self-effacement  or  the  spiritual  pas- 
sion of  the  true  prophet. 

There  are  many  parallels  to  this  description 
of  the  preaching  of  Francis.  The  men  who 
made  the  great  Evangelistic  Revival  of  the 
eighteenth  century  were  in  most  cases  much 
more  remarkable  for  their  mystic  spiritual 
power  than  for  any  extraordinary  breadth 
of  intellectual  gift.  They  were  mostly  men 
of  the  type  of  David  Brainerd,  who  lived  so 
thoroughly  in  a  world  of  spiritual  emotions  that 
when  they  preached  men  became  aware  of 
strange  spiritual  potencies  in  them  which  lay 
quite  outside  the  apprehension  or  analysis  of 
reason.  In  the  severity  of  the  discipline  which 
they  underwent  for  the  subjugation  of  the  flesh 
and  its  passions ;  in  their  habits  of  intense  and 
prolonged  prayer;  in  the  vivid  sense  they 
habitually  had  of  a  struggle  with  unseen 
powers;  in  their  singular  capacity  of  extreme 
rapture  and  extreme  despondence,  they  were 
close  akin  to  saints  like  Francis,  and  dreamers 
like  Bunyan,  and  poets  like  Cowper.  Far  as 
such  men  stand  apart  in  matters  of  thought,  yet 
they  inhabited  the  same  world,  a  world  which 
throbbed  and  quickened  in  the  ' '  white  radiance 
of  eternity."  Thus  a  certain  power  clothed 
them  which  was  nameless  to  the  purely  intel- 


42  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

lectual  critic.  Their  influence  upon  the  mind 
and  wills  of  those  who  heard  them  seemed  to  be, 
and  indeed  was,  as  it  appeared  to  Thomas  of 
Spoleto  when  he  heard  Francis  preach,  quite 
out  of  proportion  to  their  intellectual  force. 
Any  one  who  has  heard  some  more  than  usually 
successful  modern  evangelist  has  often  found 
cause  for  the  same  kind  of  criticism.  Such  a 
hearer  has  asked,  sometimes  in  genuine  wonder, 
sometimes  with  veiled  scorn,  What  is  there  in 
the  man  or  his  utterance  to  account  for  his  in- 
fluence over  the  people!  There  has  been  no 
originality  of  thought,  no  brilliance  of  expres- 
sion, and,  it  may  be,  but  little  of  the  arts  of 
oratory.  It  would  be  easy  to  name  dozens  of 
men  who  could  preach  a  better  sermon,  and  it  is 
not  vanity  which  has  led  the  critic  to  think  that 
he  could  preach  a  much  better  sermon  himself. 
Yet  the  fact  remains  that  in  such  cases  as  these 
the  weak  things  appear  chosen  to  confound  the 
mighty,  as  though  God  meant  the  lesson  to  be 
learned  that  it  is  not  by  might,  but  by  the 
Spirit  of  Divine  enduement,  that  miracles  are 
wrought.  The  actual  living  of  a  spiritual  life 
is  the  one  method  by  which  spiritual  power  is 
acquired. 

It  is  no  doubt  much  easier,  much  less  irksome, 
for  a  minister  to  live  a  life  of  high  intellectual 
interests  tempered  by  spiritual  desires,  and  it  is 
probable  that  his  congregation  will  ask  nothing 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE  43 

more  of  him.  But  when  nothing  more  is  at- 
tempted, and  nothing  more  demanded,  the  end 
of  the  day  can  only  bring  spiritual  bankruptcy. 
Moreover,  the  work  of  a  minister  implies  spir- 
itual leadership.  He  has  to  create  demands  as 
well  as  supply  them.  It  is  no  exaggeration,  and 
neither  is  it  egoism,  to  say  that  as  the  prophet 
is,  so  will  be  the  people.  A  congregation  soon 
discovers  the  measure  of  its  minister,  and  it  will 
be  no  more  spiritual,  no  more  self-sacrificing, 
no  more  zealous  of  good  works  than  he  is. 
When  we  complain  of  the  deadness  of  our  con- 
gregations, ought  we  not  rather  to  examine 
our  own  hearts!  And  if  we  do  so  with  rigid 
scrutiny,  should  we  not  often  find  that  we  are 
dead?  And  this  may  imply  no  conscious  lapse 
of  faith,  no  desistance  from  high  moral  effort, 
nothing  that  could  justly  be  described  as 
apostasy.  It  is  something  which  consists  less 
in  a  falling  away  than  in  a  failure  to  press  for- 
ward. We  have  planned  our  path  along  safe 
ways,  and  have  not  made  for  the  heights.  We 
have  not  imagined  sainthood  as  our  goal.  We 
have  been  equally  unwilling  to  practice  either 
the  discipline  of  the  saint  or  to  seek  a  share  in 
his  emotions.  That  we  have  done  good  and  are 
doing  good  is  not  denied ;  but  we  do  not  need  to 
be  reminded  that  we  dwell  in  a  wholly  different 
world  from  a  Francis,  or  a  Bunyan,  or  a  Brain- 
erd.    Is  it  possible  that  we,  the  ordinary  min- 


44         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

isters  of  Christ,  can  enter  the  strange  world 
where  they  dwelt  ?  Can  we  share  their  passion, 
their  power,  and  their  gift  I  If  we  can  trust 
either  Scripture,  or  history,  or  experience,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  of  the  reply;  for  their  passion 
was  a  passion  for  the  souls  of  the  people  which 
every  Christian  should  feel;  and  their  power 
was  the  power  of  perfect  submission  to  Christ, 
which  every  Christian  may  practice;  and  their 
gift  was  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  is  the 
catholic  inheritance  of  the  entire  Christian 
Church. 

Granting,  then,  that  the  indispensable  condi- 
tion of  evangelistic  equipment  is  the  kind  of 
spiritual  force  which  springs  from  a  deep  and 
intense  spiritual  life,  we  may  now  consider  what 
are  the  qualities  peculiar  to  an  evangelistic  ser- 
mon. '^  His  ways  were  rather  those  of  con- 
versation," says  the  critic  of  Francis.  It  is 
clear  that  Francis  was  unconventional.  He 
paid  no  attention  to  the  merely  artificial  rules 
of  oratory.  Two  hundred  and  seventy  years 
later  we  find  the  same  phenomenon  in  Savo- 
narola. Savonarola  commenced  his  ministry  in 
Florence  with  sermons  of  the  formal  type  that 
were  then  popular — polished,  learned,  and  lit- 
erary— and  he  attracted  no  attention.  His  ca- 
reer as  a  preacher  did  not  begin  till  he  freed 
himself  from  the  trammels  of  this  tradition. 
He  discarded  artificiality,  became  natural,  al- 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE  45 

lowed  all  his  gifts  free  play,  and  the  effect  was 
immediate  and  immense.  His  passion  for 
Christ  and  for  the  immediate  establishment  of 
Christ's  kingdom  broke  through  all  the  tram- 
mels of  the  pulpit.  Some  were  scandalised,  all 
were  startled;  but  the  fact  remains  that  these 
sermons  moved  Florence  to  her  depths,  and 
even  a  man  like  Michael  Angelo,  artist,  poet, 
and  scholar  as  he  was,  in  his  extreme  old  age 
could  not  recall  and  speak  of  these  sermons 
without  tears. 

The  pulpit  now,  as  then,  has  traditions  which 
are  a  trammel  upon  free  utterance.  Intense 
and  passionate  utterance  is  liable  to  be  misun- 
derstood; it  is  often  not  welcomed,  and  it  is 
always  deprecated  by  those  with  whom  de- 
corum counts  for  more  than  truth.  And  yet  I 
believe  no  preacher  is  so  generally  respected  in 
the  long  run  as  the  preacher  who  is  fearless. 
I  am  led  to  think  that  in  every  church,  however 
cultured  and  accustomed  to  restraint  its  con- 
gregation may  be,  there  are  multitudes  of  peo- 
ple who  would  hail  with  joy  the  brave  voice  that 
spoke  in  complete  disregard  of  convention.  I 
believe  that  we  ministers  are  in  most  instances 
much  too  mealy-mouthed  in  our  applications  of 
truth.  We  do  not  come  to  grips  with  the  con- 
science ;  we  move,  high-poised,  on  a  wide  circle 
round  our  prey,  and  never  drop  with  the  hawk's 
swiftness  and  deadly  impact  upon  it;  and  the 


46         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

result  is  a  sense  of  unreality  in  our  perform- 
ances, as  though  the  whole  affair  were  a  stage 
illusion  of  cardboard  armies  in  a  mock  conflict. 
I  was  much  struck  by  the  remark  of  one  of  the 
most  able  and  cultured  men  in  Plymouth  Church 
at  the  conclusion  of  my  mission.  ^  ^  I  have  only 
one  complaint  to  make  against  you/'  he  said, 
*^  you  did  not  hit  us  hard  enough."  And  as  I 
have  reflected  upon  that  remark  I  have  come  to 
think  that  the  chief  cause  for  the  decline  of  in- 
fluence in  the  modern  pulpit  is  the  lack  of  entire 
plain  speaking.  We  are  the  slaves  of  conven- 
tion. We  imagine  that  because  a  congregation 
is  wealthy  and  cultured  it  knows  nothing  about 
sin.  For  my  part  I  confess  that  since  I  have 
been  at  pains  to  understand  the  constituent  ele- 
ments of  my  own  congregation  a  very  different 
conclusion  has  been  forced  upon  me.  I  know 
now  that  I  can  address  no  congregation  in  a 
great  city  that  is  not  likely  to  include  the  drunk- 
ard, the  adulterer,  the  youth  of  impure  life,  the 
woman  beset  by  temptation,  the  commercial 
rogue,  and  the  man  who  draws  his  reven- 
ues from  wrong.  Face  to  face  with  these 
awful  realities  of  life  the  speech  of  the 
preacher  must  also  be  a  real  thing,  or  it  will 
be  useless. 

In  the  Yale  Lectures  on  preaching  of  Na- 
thaniel Burton,  who  was  one  of  the  most  spir- 
itual and  accomplished  ministers  New  England 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         47 

ever  had,  there  is  this  significant  confession: 
^  *  It  has  been  the  sin  of  my  life, ' '  says  Burton, 
^*  that  I  have  not  always  taken  aim.  I  have 
been  a  lover  of  subjects.  If  I  had  loved  men 
more,  and  loved  subjects  only  as  God's  instru- 
ments of  good  for  men,  it  would  have  been  bet- 
ter, and  I  should  have  more  to  show  for  all  my 
labour  under  the  sun. ' '  How  many  of  us  might 
make  the  same  confession?  We  have  loved 
subjects;  loved,  that  is,  a  theme  for  its  own 
sake.  We  have  taken  pleasure,  as  we  have 
given  pleasure,  in  its  suggestiveness,  its  stately 
evolution,  its  march  of  polished  phrase,  its 
^^  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out."  But  we 
have  not  taken  aim,  and  that  is  a  fatal  defi- 
ciency. The  arrow  has  described  a  brilliant 
parabola  in  the  air,  but  it  has  not  cleaved  the 
mark;  and  to  fail  of  the  mark  is  to  fail  alto- 
gether. Herein,  then,  is  the  distinguishing 
characteristic  of  the  evangelistic  sermon — it 
takes  aim.  The  evangelist  pleads  for  a  verdict. 
His  immediate  duty^and  it  should  be  one  that 
impassions  all  his  powers — is  to  win  men  then 
and  there  for  Christ.  And  what  applies  to  the 
evangelist  should  be  applicable  to  all  preaching ; 
it  should  have  a  perfectly  definite  purpose  and 
goal.  Otherwise  it  is  lecturing,  not  preaching; 
and  it  is  the  use  of  the  pulpit  for  lecturing  in- 
stead of  preaching  that  has  done  more  than  any- 
thing else  to  reduce  its  influence,  and  to  produce 


48  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

both  in  the  speaker  and  the  hearer  a  sense  of 
unreality. 

In  the  preaching  that  thus  takes  aim  there 
will  necessarily  be  found  the  element  of  direct- 
ness. Here  again  a  passage  from  Burton's 
Lectures  is  significant.  He  tells  us  that  he  once 
delivered  an  address  on  temperance  to  an  as- 
sembly of  sailors.  They  listened  to  his  care- 
fully written  speech  in  entire  silence  and  with 
perfect  respect.  When  he  had  finished,  a  thick- 
set sailor  man  talked  to  them  for  ten  minutes, 
^  ^  and  then  they  were  impressed  beyond  bounds, 
and  beyond  all  the  proprieties  of  silence.  I  felt 
my  superiority  even  yet,  in  respect  of  brains, 
and  culture,  and  the  power  to  write  a  good- 
looking  manuscript,  so  that  I  did  not  propose 
to  exchange  with  him  and  be  he ;  but  I  would  like 
to  know  for  all  time  the  straight  cut  to  men's 
minds,  hearts,  and  wills."  It  is  precisely  the 
knowledge  of  the  straight  cut  which  is  indis- 
pensable to  the  evangelistic  preacher.  It  is 
found  more  easily  by  the  illiterate  than  the  cul- 
tured. There  is  a  great  deal  of  intellectual 
baggage  to  be  discarded  before  the  soldier  of 
the  schools  can  transform  himself  into  the  guer- 
illa chief.  Yet  if  the  soldier  of  the  schools,  the 
man  versed  and  learned  in  all  the  fine  strate- 
gies of  war,  can  but  discover  how  to  move  freely, 
he  will  make  a  thousand-fold  better  guerilla 
chief  than  the  man  who  has  not  had  his  training. 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         49 

Above  all,  there  must  be  heard  in  evangelistic 
preaching  the  note  of  authority.  It  is  the  posi- 
tive conviction  based  upon  the  positive  experi- 
ence that  tells.  The  message  to  be  spoken  is 
one  of  life  or  death,  and  it  is  not  our  own.  We 
speak  for  Another,  to  whom  is  given  the  juris- 
diction of  both  time  and  eternity.  We  are  the 
Ambassadors  of  a  Kingdom  that  cannot  be  re- 
moved. Whether  people  hear  or  forbear,  the 
message  must  be  spoken.  And  man  being  what 
he  is,  a  creature  constantly  misled  by  his  pas- 
sions, and  misdirected  by  false  guides ;  a  wan- 
derer who  has  lost  the  path  and  is  weary  of 
illusions ;  and  above  all  a  creature  conscious  of 
his  own  incompetence,  he  will  eagerly  respond 
to  the  note  of  authority.  His  supreme  need  is 
obedience,  and  he  knows  it.  His  own  painful 
errors  dispose  him  to  submission  to  any  au- 
thority competent  to  direct  and  guide  him.  So 
it  has  happened,  and  so  it  will  always  happen, 
that  when  one  speaks  to  him  with  authority,  and 
not  as  the  scribes,  he  hears  him  gladly.  The 
power  of  the  evangelist  will  be  in  the  direct 
ratio  of  the  sense  of  authority  created  by  his 
character,  his  life,  and  his  message. 


I  come  now  to  that  sequence  of  providences 
which  led  to  my  visit  to  the  United  States,  and 
the  work  I  was  led  to  do  there.     On  the  21st 


50         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

November,  1903,  I  attended  the  first  meeting  of 
the  special  mission  in  my  own  chnrch  at  High- 
bury. On  the  21st  November,  1904,  I  had  a 
great  farewell  meeting  in  Plymouth  Church, 
Brooklyn,  at  the  close  of  a  week's  mission  ser- 
vices.    The  21st  of  November  is  my  birthday. 

Had  any  one  two  years  ago  prophesied  either 
of  those  events  to  me,  I  should  have  received  the 
prophecy  with  entire  incredulity.  Had  any  one 
during  the  period  of  troubled  debate  which  I 
suffered  in  the  sunnner  of  1902  even  so  much  as 
hinted  at  such  possibilities  in  my  life,  I  should 
have  been  moved  to  ridicule.  Constitutionally, 
or  at  least  by  long  habit  of  mind,  I  had  less 
sympathy  with  revivalism  than  most  ministers. 
The  barbaric  theology,  the  crude  appeal,  the  sen- 
sational pyrotechnics,  the  doubtful  methods  of 
the  old-fashioned  revivalism,  had  always  moved 
my  repulsion.  My  occasional  contact  with  re- 
vival preachers  in  early  life  had  not  been  for- 
tunate. On  one  occasion  I  had  been  forced 
wholly  to  withdraw  myself  from  a  preacher  of 
this  kind  who  was  holding  a  mission  in  a  church 
under  my  care.  My  gospel  was,  I  was  proud  to 
think,  the  gospel  of  sweetness  and  light.  The 
only  evangelist  who  had  ever  commanded  my 
sympathy  was  Moody,  and  my  contact  with  him 
was  brief  and  fugitive.  Henry  Drummond  I 
knew  rather  as  a  man  of  letters  and  a  charming 
personality  than  an  evangelist.    From  time  to 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         51 

time  other  evangelists  had  crossed  my  path,  but 
I  had  derived  no  help  from  them.  Yet  there 
was  that  in  me  which  did  respond  to  the  Evan- 
gelistic Note.  I  could  have  followed  Catherine 
Booth.  I  had  often  listened  to  the  Salvationist 
at  the  street  corner  with  a  thrilling  heart.  But 
I  simply  state  the  plain  truth  about  myself 
when  I  say  that  in  1902  the  last  possible  thought 
that  could  have  occurred  to  me  would  have  been 
that  ever  I  should  visit  the  United  States  to  con- 
duct an  evangelistic  campaign. 

It  was  in  the  summer  of  1902  that  Dr.  Hillis 
visited  my  Church  in  London.  I  had  but  three 
days  of  his  company,  and  I  did  not  meet  him 
again  till  we  met  in  New  York.  He  pressed  me 
to  visit  America  on  the  ground  that  my  books 
were  widely  read  there.  He  promised  me  a 
very  friendly  reception,  and  the  prospect  natu- 
rally attracted  me.  But  neither  he  nor  I  im- 
agined any  other  programme  than  a  tour  that 
should  occupy  itself  mainly  with  public  lectures 
and  occasional  sermons.  I  first  of  all  proposed 
to  come  in  the  summer  of  1903,  but  found  it  im- 
possible to  leave  my  Church.  I  again  iDroposed 
to  come  in  the  summer  of  1904,  but  this  arrange- 
ment was  also  cancelled.  At  last  the  autumn 
of  1904  was  fixed  for  the  visit.  It  appeared 
that  the  National  Council  of  Congregationalism 
was  to  be  held  at  Des  Moines  in  the  October  of 
this  year,  and  Dr.  Hillis  thought  it  highly  desir- 


52  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

able  that  I  should  attend  it.  He  drew  up  for 
me  a  programme  which  included  many  ad- 
dresses at  colleges  and  universities,  and  a  rea- 
sonable amount  of  preaching.  On  the  28th  of 
September  of  the  present  year  I  left  England 
to  fulfil  this  programme. 

According  to  my  programme  I  was  to  preach 
at  Plymouth  Church  on  the  second  Sunday 
evening  in  October.  On  the  previous  day  I  had 
a  conversation  with  Dr.  Hillis,  in  his  study,  in 
which  I  was  moved  to  tell  him  all  about  the 
recent  changes  in  my  own  life  and  ministry.  I 
described  the  Brighton  meetings,  the  mission  in 
my  own  Church,  the  many  moving  incidents  in 
that  mission,  and  the  new  spiritual  life  that  had 
come  from  it  both  to  my  congregation  and  my- 
self. I  was  moved  to  tears,  and  so  was  he.  At 
last  he  cried,  ' '  We  must  have  a  mission  in  Ply- 
mouth Church,  and  you  must  conduct  it. ' '  The 
proposition  seemed  fanciful.  I  could  not  im- 
agine it  possible  that  any  Church,  and  espe- 
cially Plymouth  Church,  would  at  a  moment's 
notice  accept  the  idea  of  a  mission.  It  was 
something  foreign  to  the  traditions  of  the 
Church,  and  I  was  totally  unknown  to  the  peo- 
ple. ''  You  will  see,"  said  Dr.  Hillis.  And  we 
saw  on  Sunday  night.  At  the  close  of  the  ser- 
mon Dr.  Hillis  rose  and  explained  his  wishes. 
He  asked  all  those  who  desired  me  to  conduct  a 
mission  in  Plymouth  Church,  and  would  sup- 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         53 

port  me  in  it,  to  rise.  The  whole  vast  congre- 
gation rose.  Such  a  call  was  too  positive  and 
too  overwhelming  to  be  refused.  With  much 
secret  misgiving,  and  yet  with  a  strong  convic- 
tion that  God's  hand  was  in  it  all,  I  consented 
to  conduct  the  mission. 

On  the  following  Sunday  Dr.  Hillis  and  I  met 
again  in  Des  Moines.  I  did  not  know  until  I 
arrived  what  part  was  allotted  to  me  in  the  pro- 
gramme of  the  Council.  It  seemed  that  I  was 
to  speak  for  not  more  than  twenty  minutes 
on  the  Sunday  afternoon.  ^'  About  what!  '^  I 
asked.  '^  Tell  them  about  your  mission,"  said 
Dr.  Hillis.  I  did  so,  and  I  found  that  the  simple 
story  moved  the  audience  in  just  the  same  way 
that  it  had  already  moved  Dr.  Hillis.  I  should 
have  left  Des  Moines  on  the  Monday  to  fulfil 
certain  lecture  engagements,  but  here  once  more 
Providence  interposed.  I  received  a  telegram 
to  the  effect  that  the  lecture  engagements  were 
cancelled.  I  never  heard  the  reason,  and  I  do 
not  know  it  now;  but  nothing  that  has  ever 
happened  to  me  has  impressed  me  so  deeply 
with  the  overruling  will  of  God.  For  as  a  re- 
sult of  the  brief  Sunday  speech  a  special  meet- 
ing on  evangelism  was  arranged  in  Des  Moines 
on  the  following  Tuesday  afternoon.  I  came  to 
it  without  the  least  idea  of  what  was  expected  of 
me.  I  found  myself  once  more  telling  my  story, 
and  more  and  more  as  I  spoke  I  felt  the  power 


54         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

of  God  present  in  that  meeting  as  I  had  never 
known  it  in  my  life.  I  can  only  judge  by  the 
articles  in  the  papers,  and  the  general  tes- 
timony, of  its  effect  on  others.  ^'  Father  '' 
Clark,  the  beloved  founder  of  the  Christian 
Endeavour  Movement,  used  as  he  must  be  to 
great  spiritual  meetings,  described  that  meeting 
as  the  most  remarkable  that  he  had  ever  known. 
I  think  we  were  all  melted ;  we  all  felt  the  hover- 
ing tongues  of  flame.  Dr.  Amory  Bradford 
made  an  impassioned  plea  for  a  deepened  spir- 
itual experience  in  ministers  as  the  precedent 
condition  of  a  new  revival.  There  was  no  need 
to  argue  the  case  of  evangelism;  it  was  ad- 
mitted. It  seemed  to  me  as  if  I  had  simply 
applied  the  spark  of  flame  to  a  train  already 
laid.  An  hour  later  I  was  permitted  to  address 
the  whole  Council  on  the  same  theme.  There 
could  be  no  doubt  of  the  solemn  and  deep  en- 
thusiasm which  pervaded  that  assembly.  And 
in  that  moment,  as  I  bowed  in  tears,  while 
' '  Father  ' '  Clark  led  the  closing  prayer,  I  knew 
why  I  had  come  to  the  United  States.  I  saw,  as 
by  a  flash  of  light,  the  long  sequences  of  Prov- 
idence. I  knew  why  I  had  not  come  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1903;  I  was  not  ripe  for  the  work  God 
had  for  me  to  do.  My  thoughts  went  back  to 
that  midnight  meeting  in  Brighton,  and  I  saw  a 
little  flame  of  holy  fire  kindled  in  my  heart,  and 
that  flame  communicated  to  my  own  Church; 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         55 

and,  lastly,  the  same  flame  graciously  permitted 
to  pass  through  me  to  this  great  assembly  of 
ministers  who  represented  a  continent.  I  was 
awed,  thrilled,  humbled.  Words  can  only  mis- 
interpret the  emotion  I  then  felt  and  feel  now. 
Heaven  can  have  no  more  sacred  hours  for  me 
than  those  hours  at  Des  Moines.  Surely  there, 
upon  me  and  many  others,  there  came  the  bap- 
tism of  Evangelism. 

In  the  meantime  a  cable  message  from  my 
own  Church  had  been  received,  extending  my 
time  of  absence,  so  that  I  might  commence 
my  mission  at  Plymouth  Church  on  Sunday, 
November  13th.  It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to 
detail  my  movements  on  leaving  Des  Moines.  I 
had  opportunities  in  Chicago,  Boston,  Hart- 
ford, and  many  other  places,  of  conversing 
with  ministers  and  addressing  various  gather- 
ings of  the  Churches  on  what  had  now  become 
for  me  the  message  of  my  visit.  I  was  received 
with  more  than  kindness  by  all  my  brethren. 
Does  Dr.  Gunsaulus  remember  how  our  hearts 
burned  together  as  we  sat  in  the  empty  Audi- 
torium at  Chicago  and  discussed  the  possi- 
bilities of  a  great  Evangelistic  Mission  in 
Chicago  ?  Shall  I  ever  forget  similar  conversa- 
tions with  many  other  brethren,  representing 
many  cities  from  Boston  to  the  Pacific  slope? 
And  what  struck  me  most,  over  and  above  the 
personal  affection  revealed  in  those  conversa- 


56  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

tions,was  the  quick  sensitiveness  to  ideas  among 
all  with  whom  I  spoke,  the  practical  sagacity, 
the  spiritual  enthusiasm,  the  broad  and  bold 
conception  of  what  an  evangelistic  campaign  in 
the  States  would  mean.  There  was  no  hanging 
back,  no  word  of  doubt.  The  conviction  seemed 
general  that  a  great  movement  had  begun. 
Speaking  with  soberest  caution,  and  with  the 
desire  to  repress  the  least  tendency  to  exaggera- 
tion, I  make  bold  to  say  that  I  found  every  sign 
of  a  great  coming  revival  in  the  temper  of  every 
minister  with  whom  I  talked  on  spiritual  things. 
There  was  a  sound  of  a  going  in  the  tops  of  the 
trees,  the  audible  stirring  of  the  wind  of  God 
bringing  with  it  fertility  and  freshness,  and  the 
promise  of  new  life.  Of  this  I  am  sure :  unless 
every  sign  be  false,  there  is  a  great  wave  of 
evangelical  revival  about  to  pass  over  the 
Churches  of  America. 

On  Sunday,  November  13th,  I  commenced  my 
mission  at  Plymouth  Church.  A  gale  was  blow- 
ing, and  throughout  the  day  the  rain  fell  in  tor- 
rents. I  waited  anxiously  for  Monday,  which  I 
knew  would  be  the  crucial  day  for  the  mission. 
Monday  evening  found  the  church  with  a  large 
but  not  a  full  congregation.  But  from  that 
point  the  momentum  of  the  mission  increased 
with  each  service.  Eequests  for  prayer  began 
to  flow  in.  The  reading  of  these  requests  pro- 
duced a  profound  impression.     They  revealed 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE  57 

moral  and  spiritual  tragedies  that  came  as  a 
revelation.  A  wife  described  the  agonised 
struggles  of  her  husband  to  keep  from  strong 
drink.  A  mother  asked  prayer  for  her  only 
son,  a  boy  of  one-and-twenty,  in  jail  for  fraud. 
A  Yorkshire  lad,  workless  and  foodless,  de- 
scribed how  the  thought  of  his  mother  had 
brought  him  to  the  service.  There  were  other 
letters  containing  confessions  of  misconduct,  or 
asking  guidance  in  matters  of  truth  and  faith. 
Here  was  the  justification  of  the  mission,  the  cry 
of  tortured  humanity  for  redemption.  Yet  my 
congregation  was,  as  Dr.  Hillis  has  borne  wit- 
ness, of  unusual  quality  both  intellectually  and 
socially.  It  was  composed  in  much  the  larger 
part  of  men.  On  the  Monday  night  I  began  to 
realise  the  difficulty  of  my  task,  and  was  dis- 
couraged. On  the  Tuesday  night  a  genuine 
movement  began.  At  the  close  of  my  address 
many  rose  in  token  of  surrender  to  Christ,  or  to 
express  a  desire  for  prayer,  and  this  was  in- 
creasingly a  feature  of  each  successive  service. 
After  each  service  Dr.  Hillis  and  myself  met 
those  who  desired  spiritual  guidance  or  help. 
On  the  Friday  evening  the  church  was  quite 
filled;  at  each  service  on  Sunday,  November 
20th,  hundreds  were  turned  away.  Beyond 
stating  these  bare  facts  it  is  not  for  me  to 
describe  further  the  doings  of  this  memorable 
week. 


58         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

Had  there  been  more  time  for  preparation, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  much  more  definite  re- 
sults might  have  been  secured.  We  had  but  a 
bare  month  for  preparation.  I  had  only  one 
opportunity  of  meeting  the  members  of  Ply- 
mouth Church  previous  to  the  mission  to  ex- 
plain my  plans.  In  the  case  of  the  mission  at 
my  own  Church  we  had  months  of  preparation. 
"We  had  ^ve  large  committees  constantly  at 
work.  We  had  a  perfectly  organised  staff  of 
workers  drilled  in  their  respective  duties.  I 
lay  stress  upon  this  point,  because  one  of  my 
critics  has  pointed  out  some  deficiencies  in 
the  Plymouth  services,  such  as  the  absence  of 
a  choir,  and  has  rightly  said  that  without 
thorough  and  adequate  preparation  the  full  re- 
sults of  a  mission  cannot  be  realised.  But  this 
very  deficiency  only  makes  the  Plymouth  mis- 
sion more  remarkable.  It  was  an  improvised, 
almost  an  impromptu,  mission,  yet  it  laid  hold 
of  the  city  in  a  degree  quite  unimagined  and  un- 
precedented. The  very  absence  of  much  that 
always  attracts  the  masses  in  an  evangelistic 
mission  served  to  emphasise  the  fact  that  it  was 
the  power  of  truth  alone  which  drew  the  people 
to  Plymouth  Church.  The  services  were  abso- 
lutely plain :  there  was  no  attempt  at  sensation- 
alism in  anything  that  was  done  or  said ;  yet  the 
people  thronged  to  the  church  until  it  was 
crowded  beyond  its  utmost  capacity. 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE  59 

One  feature  of  the  mission  was  unique — it 
was  a  mission  by  the  pen  as  well  as  by  the  voice. 
For  a  whole  week  Dr.  Hillis  edited  an  entire 
page  of  The  Brooklyn  Eagle.  He  discussed 
himself,  and  gathered  round  him  a  band  of  bril- 
liant men  for  the  discussion  of,  the  great  moral 
and  spiritual  problems  of  the  nation.  Thus,  in 
addition  to  the  verbatim  report  of  my  ad- 
dresses, each  day  there  was  presented  to  the 
public  a  striking  manifesto  on  the  greatest  ques- 
tions of  the  time.  It  is  impossible  to  gauge  the 
effect  of  these  discussions,  but  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  they  interpreted  the  purposes  and 
spirit  of  the  mission  to  great  numbers  of 
thoughtful  men  who  had  no  predilection  for 
Churches,  and  still  less  for  ordinary  evan- 
gelistic services.  If,  as  Dr.  Hillis  states,  ^^  the 
very  best  people  ''  attended  these  services,  in- 
cluding ^^  jurists,  lawyers,  editors,  bankers, 
merchants,  manufacturers,  educators — men  who 
do  things  and  control  the  life  of  this  great 
city,"  he  did  far  more  than  I  to  attract  them. 
His  part  in  the  mission  was  one  which  none  but 
himself  could  have  attempted;  it  was  to  recon- 
cile thoughtful  men  to  the  idea  of  evangelism, 
to  rehabilitate  and  reinstate  it,  to  ally  it  with 
broad  civic  and  national  aims,  and  to  assert  its 
claim  upon  the  intellect.  This  crusade  through 
the  press  conducted  by  Dr.  Hillis  is  something 
which,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  never  ■  yet 


60  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

been  attempted  in  union  with  evangelistic  ser- 
vices. 

No  words  of  mine  can  express  the  sense  of 
obligation  that  I  feel  to  Dr.  Hillis  for  the  more 
than  brotherly  love  he  showed  me,  nor  to  the 
PljTiionth  people  for  the  beautiful  spirit  they 
manifested  towards  me.  '\¥liat  other  people 
would  have  accepted  at  a  moment's  notice  the 
idea  of  a  mission  to  be  conducted  by  a  total 
stranger,  and  have  given  him  straightway  the 
full  treasure  of  their  love  and  confidence  ?  My 
heart  fills  with  gratitude  and  affection  when  I 
think  of  it  all.  Plymouth  Church,  always  to  me 
one  of  the  sacred  shrines  of  the  world,  is  hence- 
forth my  second  home.  The  time  during  which 
I  was  associated  with  its  life  was  brief  indeed; 
but  the  nature  of  the  association  was  such  that 
the  ties  created  were  more  strong  and  tender 
than  are  often  created  by  years  of  common  ser- 
vice. I  accept  with  profound  humility  the 
beautiful  saying  of  Dr.  Eaymond  at  the  farewell 
meeting,  '^  We  have  shared  a  Pentecost  to- 
gether. ' '  And  therein  is  a  bond  which  will  en- 
dure till  death,  and  beyond  it. 

And  now  as  I  look  back  upon  the  way  that 
God  has  led  me,  I  am  filled  with  the  calm  assur- 
ance that  in  all  these  happenings  I  have  but 
been  the  servant  of  the  Divine  Will.  I  have 
sought  nothing ;  all  has  come  to  me.  I  have  not 
chosen  my  course ;  it  has  been  arranged  for  me. 


THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE         Gl 

I  desire  nothing,  but  to  be  the  servant  of  the 
Divine  Will,  and  to  follow  whithersoever  it  may 
lead  me. 

Early  one  morning  during  the  Plymouth  mis- 
sion, when  it  was  yet  dark,  I  woke  sobbing  for 
joy.  I  could  not  explain  my  emotion ;  I  cannot 
explain  it  now.  All  that  I  knew  was  that  I  felt 
a  great  sense  of  Divine  uplifting,  as  though  the 
infinite  tenderness  of  God  folded  me  round,  and 
in  my  soul  was  the  glad  assurance  that  I  was 
doing  the  work  God  had  for  me  to  do,  and  should 
be  led  and  sustained  in  it.  That  is  my  feeling 
still.  I  know  not  where  the  new  path  may  lead, 
but  that  in  evangelism  I  must  needs  find  such 
work  as  life  may  still  have  for  me  to  do  is  an 
assurance,  the  clearest  of  the  clear,  which  lies 
beyond  all  argument  or  question. 

The  Spirit  of  God  already  moves  upon  the 
face  of  the  waters.  New  tides  are  beginning  to 
flow  in  the  life  of  the  nations.  The  great  Re- 
vival is  coming — not  an  ethical  revival  only  as 
some  say,  but  a  spiritual  revival  first,  because 
the  spiritual  must  precede  the  ethical.  For  my- 
self, and  for  all  who  read  my  words,  I  pray  that 
we  may  be  ready,  with  alert  feet  and  lighted 
lamps,  to  meet  the  Bridegroom,  who  even  now 
draws  nigh. 


II 

THE  SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  CHRIS- 
TIAN LOVE 

{Plymouth  Churchy  Sunday^  October  9th.) 

MY  subject  is  ''  The  Social  Significance 
of  Christian  Love,"  and  the  passage 
on  which  I  shall  base  my  address  is 
found  in  1  John  iii.  14 :  ^  ^  We  know  that  we  have 
passed  from  death  unto  life,  because  we  love 
the  brethren.'' 

We  are  told  that  when  the  scholars  of  the 
Bible  Society  undertake  to  translate  the  Bible 
into  the  tongues  and  dialects  of  heathen  peoples, 
they  frequently  have  to  create  the  very  words 
which  express  Christian  truths,  because  the 
words  do  not  exist.  There  is  no  word  for  sin, 
there  is  no  word  for  redemption,  in  these  va- 
rious dialects  and  tongues  of  the  heathen  races, 
and  the  words  do  not  exist,  because  the  concep- 
tion does  not  exist.  The  same  thing  may  be 
said  of  the  Christian  conception  of  love  as  it 
was  first  pronounced  and  expounded  among 
those  great  and  decaying  civilisations  who  first 
heard  the  message  of  Christianity.  There  was 
no  word  for  love  in  the  sense  in  which  Christ 

63 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE    63 

and  His  apostles  used  it.  Love  had  a  domestic, 
a  sentimental,  and  a  physical  significance,  but 
no  moral  and  spiritual  significance.  It  was  a 
word  deeply  imbedded  in  the  family  life  of  man- 
kind. It  had  a  sentimental  significance,  illus- 
trated in  the  poetry  of  the  whole  race.  Above 
all,  it  was  a  synonym  of  physical  sensation.  To 
love,  upon  the  lips  of  Christ  and  His  apostles, 
meant  none  of  these  things.  Love,  as  the  great 
master- word  of  the  new-born  Church,  was  an 
absolutely  new  word,  standing  for  a  kind  of 
passion  which  was  new  in  human  experience. 
It  is  little  wonder  that  early  persecutors  of  the 
Christian  Church  entirely  misinterpreted  the 
life  of  a  community  whose  watchword  was  love, 
attributing  to  such  communities  the  most 
abominable  acts,  because  the  word  had  become 
saturated  with  abominable  meanings  by  pagan 
poets,  by  vile  Emperors,  and  by  the  filthy 
imaginings  of  a  corrupt  people.  How  new  and 
strange  the  word  must  have  sounded  then  upon 
the  lips  of  Christians  may  be  measured  by  this 
text,  which  uses  it  as  a  boast,  and  as  a  test  and 
watchword  for  a  new  kind  of  life.  '  ^  We  know 
that  we  have  passed  from  death  unto  life,  be- 
cause we  love  the  brethren."  It  was  a  word  of 
new  spiritual  significance,  it  was  also  a  word  of 
new  social  significance,  and  it  is  of  the  new 
social  significance  of  the  word  I  wish  to  speak 
to-night. 


64  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

We  love,  we  love  the  brethren.  Both  words 
were  new.  It  was  by  the  utterance  of  these  two 
words  that  Christianity  broke  up  the  empire  of 
the  old  paganism,  and  created  a  new  society  and 
a  new  world.  Measure  the  daring  antithesis  of 
this  text.  Life  is  represented  by  love  and 
brotherhood,  death  by  their  absence.  Where 
this  new  kind  of  love  is  not,  there  is  death, 
dying  societies,  dying  empires.  Where  Christ's 
love  comes,  there  is  the  rejuvenation  of  the 
nation,  of  society,  of  the  individual,  and  the 
creation  of  new  empire.  There  is  not  a  hair's 
breadth  of  exaggeration  in  that  old  missionary 
hymn,  seldom  sung  now,  which  pictures  the 
heathen  dying  day  by  day,  and  then  invokes  the 
Christian  Church — 


"  Fly,  Christians,  to  their  rescue  fly, 
Preach  Jesus  to  them  e'er  they  die.' 


It  is  historically  true.  Such  communities  are 
dying,  and  not  through  errors  in  spiritual 
knowledge  only,  or  even  chiefly.  They  are 
dying  through  lack  of  social  love.  You  may 
understand  this  at  once  if  you  admit  what  seems 
to  me  too  plainly  and  too  tragically  true  of  the 
civilisation  of  our  own  day,  viz.,  that  while 
materialism  as  a  theory  of  the  world  is  nearly 
extinct,  materialism  as  a  social  force  has  still 
a  grip  upon  us,  producing  daily  all  those  rapa- 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE   65 

cious  lusts  which  inflict  injustice  on  the  weak 
and  make  our  social  life  a  state  of  warfare.  We 
need  clearer  conceptions  of  spiritual  and  theo- 
logical truth,  no  doubt,  but  we  need  a  great  deal 
more  the  spirit  and  the  temper  of  Jesus  Christ 
in  our  social  relationships,  and  that  spirit  is 
love.  Notice,  then,  the  daring  antithesis  of  this 
passage.  The  life  of  a  society  is  measured  by 
the  love  of  a  society.  Christianity  is  not 
dogma,  it  is  conduct.  *'*  We  know  that  we  have 
passed  from  death  unto  life,"  not  because  we 
have  acknowledged  the  supremacy  of  certain 
great  theological  truths,  not  because  we  wear 
the  name  of  Jesus  as  an  ornament,  not  because 
we  write  upon  our  phylacteries  the  shibboleths 
of  a  vain  orthodoxy — '^  We  know  we  have 
passed  from  death  unto  life,  because  we  love  the 
brethren. ' ' 

How  are  we  to  arrive  at  any  just  apprehen- 
sion, then,  of  this  new  and  peculiar  meaning 
which  Christianity  has  attached  to  this  word 
love!  Naturally  we  must  turn  to  Christ  Him- 
self, who  alone  can  interpret  for  us  what  Chris- 
tianity is  and  what  Christianity  was  meant  to 
be.  Take  first,  then,  one  of  the  words  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  uttered  very  early  in  His 
ministry,  one  of  those  words  which  may  be 
quoted  as  a  kind  of  key-note  to  the  thoughts  of 
our  Lord :  ' '  For  if  ye  love  them  who  love  you, 
what  reward  have  ye  I    Do  not  even  the  publi- 


66         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

cans  the  same?  "  Now,  how  do  you  interpret 
that  saying  of  onr  Lord's?  I  interpret  it. to 
mean  this :  It  is  a  declaration  of  the  insufficiency 
of  domestic  love  as  a  social  force.  We  often 
say  that  the  family  is  the  unit  of  the  nation. 
Let  a  nation  produce  families  knit  together  by 
firm  affections,  let  the  sacredness  of  kinship  be 
realised,  and  let  the  religion  of  the  hearth  be 
honoured,  and  you  will  then  build  up  a  great 
and  a  prosperous  nation.  No  doubt  that  is 
true;  but,  after  all,  it  is  only  a  partial  truth, 
it  is  only  a  kind  of  half-truth.  Why?  Because 
there  can  be  no  more  absolutely  selfish  force  in 
the  world  than  that  kind  of  love  which  limits 
itself  to  its  own  kith  and  kin.  Feudalism  is 
sufficient  to  teach  you  that.  The  vital  principle 
of  feudalism  was  intense  loyalty  amongst  fam- 
ilies, tribes,  and  clans.  And  what  was  the 
result?  A  condition  of  constant  warfare  which 
split  up  society  into  scores  of  hostile  camps. 
The  love  of  one's  own  clan  meant  an  equal 
hatred  of  some  other  clan.  Service  to  one's 
own  feudal  lord  meant  hostility  to  all  other 
feudal  communities.  Loyalty  to  one's  own  kith 
and  kin  meant  a  determination  to  push  their  ad- 
vantage at  all  costs,  and  to  defeat  all  those  who 
stood  outside  the  charmed  circle  of  relation- 
ship. And  so  the  entire  spirit  of  feudalism  is 
summed  up  in  the  striking  utterance  of  Words- 
worth :  it  was 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE    67 

"The  simple  plan, 
That  they  should  take  who  have  the  power, 
And  they  should  keep  who  can." 

Feudalism  seems  a  long  way  removed  from 
these  later  times.  Make  no  mistake  about  it, 
however,  the  spirit  of  feudalism  still  survives. 
It  survives  in  self-centred  families,  who  have  no 
interest  outside  the  well-being  and  the  advance- 
ment of  their  own  members.  It  survives  in 
class  feeling,  in  the  existence  of  separate  sects 
or  castes  in  the  community,  united  by  a  common 
bond  of  culture  and  wealth,  and  living  a  common 
life,  but  utterly  disdainful  and  ignorant  of  the 
larger  life  that  goes  on  round  about  them.  It 
sur\dves  in  the  contempt  of  culture  for  igno- 
rance, the  freezing  scorn  of  people  who  have  ar- 
tistic sensibilities  for  those  who  have  none.  It 
survives  even  in  the  great  political  parties, 
which  are  held  together  less  by  common  prin- 
ciple than  by  a  sense  of  common  advantage.  It 
is  beside  the  point  to  say  that  all  these  different 
bodies  of  individuals  have  a  true  affection  for 
their  own  members,  that  they  can  be  generous, 
kindly,  and  magnanimous  to  each  other.  The 
fact  remains  that  feudalism,  wherever  you  find 
it,  is  anti-social.  To  love  those  who  love  you 
won't  help  society  very  much.  To  be  loyal  to 
your  own  kith  and  kin  alone,  is  that  a  great 
advantage  to  humanity!  From  the  Christian 
Christ  demands  something  more  than  domestic 


68  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

love — love  for  man  as  man.  He  demands  the 
acknowledgment  that  all  men  are  members  of  a 
common  family,  and  it  is  from  this  kind  of  love 
alone  that  a  truly  Christian  society  can  arise. 
By  this,  "  we  know  that  we  have  passed  from 
death  unto  life,''  not  that  we  love  our  own,  not 
that  we  are  faithful  to  our  friends,  but  that  we 
love  all  men,  and  realise  that  they  are  our  breth- 
ren in  Christ  Jesus. 

Look  again  at  the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ  as 
shown  in  His  daily  actions,  and  let  one  illustra- 
tion suffice.  If  you  turn  to  the  Book  of  Leviti- 
cus, you  will  there  come  upon  what  may  be 
called  the  law  of  the  leper.  Here  it  is:  ^^  And 
the  leper,  in  whom  the  plague  is,  his  clothes 
shall  be  rent  and  his  head  bare,  and  he  shall  put 
a  covering  upon  his  upper  lip,  and  shall  cry, 
Unclean,  unclean.  He  shall  dwell  alone;  with- 
out the  camp  shall  his  habitation  be."  What  a 
fate  for  a  man  whose  disease  is  not  his  punish- 
ment but  his  misfortune!  How  terrible  this 
life-long  ostracism,  open  degradation,  utter 
isolation,  shame  after  shame  heaped  upon  his 
head,  no  eye  to  regard  him  but  with  fear  and 
repulsion,  no  hand  stretched  out  in  pity,  no 
heart  in  which  his  memory  is  permitted  to  sur- 
vive, a  man  already  dead  and  buried  while  he 
lives!  Behold  the  leper  as  he  goes  forth  into 
the  wilderness,  accursed  of  man,  yet  a  man  who 
only  yesterday  dwelt  amongst  those  who  loved 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE   69 

him,  who  held  his  face  familiar,  who  looked  up 
into  his  eyes  with  kindness.  Measure  the  awful- 
ness  of  his  fate — in  a  moment  thrust  out  from 
the  haunts  of  men,  stripped  of  his  wealth, 
clothed  with  indignity,  henceforth  tasting  the 
bitterness  of  an  exile  which  is  all  the  more  bitter 
and  terrible  because  it  is  exile  within  sight  of 
home,  within  sight  of  those  joyous  ways  of  life 
where  he  once  moved  in  the  gladness  of  his  youth 
and  the  vigour  of  his  manhood.  ''  He  shall 
dwell  alone,  without  the  camp  shall  his  habita- 
tion be. "  If  he  venture  back  but  for  a  moment 
to  the  haunts  of  men,  he  shall  be  driven  out  with 
stones  and  curses,  so  cruel  can  men  become  un- 
der the  influence  of  terror  and  repulsion.  And  I 
will  ask  you  to  remember  that  the  terror  and  the 
repulsion  are  both  natural,  as  those  know  who, 
like  myself,  have  looked  upon  the  lepers  of  the 
East.  You  cannot  look  upon  a  leper  without  a 
dreadful  shrinking  away  of  your  whole  person 
from  him.  These  are  natural  feelings,  but  are 
they  Christian?  Let  the  Gospels  answer,  for 
do  they  not  tell  us  how  Jesus  laid  His  hands  of 
healing  upon  the  lepers  ?  Let  the  expositors  of 
the  Gospels  answer,  for  does  not  the  writer  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  tell  us  that  ^  ^  Christ 
also  went  without  the  camp,  bearing  our  re- 
proach ''?  It  was  without  the  camp  the  leper 
had  to  dwell.  It  was  without  the  camp  that 
Christ  went,  that  He  might  seek  and  save  that 


70  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

which  was  lost.  Here  surely,  then,  there  is  a 
kind  of  love  utterly  different  from  any  love  that 
the  world  had  known  before — a  love  that  had  its 
root  in  a  conception  of  humanity  so  full,  so 
sensitive,  and  so  catholic,  that  even  the  leper 
was  included  in  it ;  and  by  this  ^ '  we  know  that 
we  have  passed  from  death  unto  life,"  that  we 
are  able  to  conquer  our  repulsion  for  man,  even 
in  his  worst  degradation,  that  our  face  is  not 
averted  even  from  the  lowest  and  the  vilest  of 
mankind,  that  we  also  are  willing  to  go  without 
the  camp  of  our  well-ordered  life,  if  by  any 
means  we  can  save  some,  that  we  do  feel  our 
brotherhood  with  the  leper,  our  obligation  to  the 
disinherited,  our  kinship  with  the  lost. 

But  while  I  have  thus  spoken,  perhaps  some 
of  you  have  said  in  your  minds, ' '  After  all,  you 
are  drawing  a  picture  of  that  which  happened  a 
long  while  ago,  and,  moreover,  you  are  quoting 
for  our  example  the  life  of  One  who  exceeded 
mankind  in  His  charity  as  He  did  in  His  entire 
nature  and  character."  Let  me,  then,  put  be- 
side the  picture  I  have  drawn,  a  picture  taken 
not  from  the  Gospels,  not  from  the  story  of  a 
life  lived  centuries  ago — a  picture  drawn  from 
the  life  of  to-day.  Have  any  of  you  ever  read 
Eobert  Louis  Stevenson's  letter  concerning 
Father  Damien?  I  will  quote  from  it.  Pass- 
ing over  entirely  those  earlier  passages  in  which 
the  scorn  of  Stevenson  is  poured  out,  and  justly 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE    71 

poured  out,  upon  the  comfortable  Christian 
minister  who  thought  it  his  business  to  defame 
Damien  while  he  knew  little  of  his  work  and 
less  of  his  character,  I  wish  to  lay  emphasis  only 
on  the  passages  in  that  letter  which  describe  the 
actual  conditions  of  Damien 's  work.  Here  is 
the  picture  of  the  life  upon  the  island  of 
Molokai  as  Stevenson  saw  it.  '^  Crowded," 
says  he,  ^  ^  with  abominable  deformations  of  our 
common  manhood,  a  population  such  as  sur- 
rounds us  in  the  horror  of  a  nightmare,  every 
fourth  face  a  blot  upon  the  landscape,  the  butt 
ends  of  human  beings  lying  there  almost  un- 
recognisable, but  still  breathing,  still  thinking, 
still  remembering."  Here  is  a  description  of 
Damien 's  work: ''  Damien  went  there,  and  shut 
to  with  his  own  hand  the  door  of  his  own 
sepulchre,  and  made  his  great  renunciation,  and 
slept  that  first  night  under  a  tree  with  his  rot- 
ting brethren,  alone  with  pestilence,  and  looking 
forward  with  what  courage  (with  what  pitiful 
shrinkings  of  dread  God  only  knows)  to  a  life- 
time of  dressing  sores  and  stumps."  You  know 
the  sequel  of  the  story,  how  Damien  lived  there 
and  died  there,  sharing  at  last  the  disease  of 
these  outcast  creatures,  and  uplifted  in  his  suf- 
ferings by  their  love  as  he  had  uplifted  them  by 
his  devotion.  Now,  do  you  know  any  kind  of 
love  that  would  inspire  a  man  to  live  a  life  like 
that  except  the  love  of  Christ  constraining  him 


72  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

into  a  great  love  for  humanity?  Domestic  love 
obviously  failed  in  this  case.  It  is  rare  indeed 
that  wife  or  parent  will  accompany  a  leper  to 
his  lonely  exile,  and  that  sentimental  form  of 
human  pity  which  we  cover  under  the  fine 
phrase,  enthusiasm  for  humanity,  failed  too,  for 
society  in  the  South  Seas  to-day  is  content,  just 
as  society  was  content  in  the  days  of  Moses,  to 
thrust  out  the  leper  and  to  be  done  with  him,  and 
to  ask  no  questions  about  his  fate.  Where  do- 
mestic love  fails,  and  where  sentimental  pity 
fails,  there  Christian  love  comes  in.  That  love 
for  man  as  man  which  Christ  felt  you  see  re- 
kindled in  the  heart  of  this  poor  Belgian  priest, 
and  that  love  blossoms  out  into  a  life  of  the 
noblest  heroism.  The  pagan  world  knew  noth- 
ing of  a  love  of  that  kind ;  aye,  and  the  world  of 
conventional  Christians  knows  nothing  about  it 
either ;  but  the  true  Christian  knows  it.  By  this 
we  may  know  we  have  passed  from  death  unto 
life :  by  asking  ourselves  whether  in  our  hearts 
we  are  able  to  think  of  and  to  love  the  lepers  of 
Molokai  as  our  brethren. 

But  why  should  I  go  to  the  South  Seas  and  to 
Father  Damien  and  to  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
for  my  illustrations  when  I  can  find  illustrations 
under  my  very  eye  in  the  life  of  to-day!  Re- 
cently there  stood  up  in  the  lecture-hall  of  my 
own  church  a  woman  who,  for  the  first  time, 
opened  her  lips  in  public.    She  got  up  to  tell  us 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE   73 

how,  by  the  grace  of  God,  she  had  been  re- 
covered from  a  condition  of  what  seemed  hope- 
less drunkenness.  She  was  a  woman  born  into 
good  society,  accomplished^  speaking  four  lan- 
guages, a  fine  musician,  widely  travelled,  and 
yet  she  had  sunk  into  the  lowest  gutter  of 
inebriety,  thrust  out  by  her  friends,  left  to 
perish,  and  discovered  by  a  Salvation  Army 
woman,  who  took  her,  with  all  her  repulsiveness, 
straight  away  to  the  Salvation  Army  Home  for 
Inebriates;  and  so  little  did  the  family  of  that 
woman  love  her,  although  they  are  wealthy  peo- 
ple, moving  in  good  society,  that  they  have 
never  paid  that  Salvation  Army  captain  for  the 
cab  fare.  This  woman  comes  once  more  before 
the  world  after  eighteen  months  of  suffering 
and  struggle  reclaimed.  You  would  say  now  do- 
mestic love  will  surely  come  in,  now  the  sense  of 
kith  and  kin  will  be  revived,  now  her  friends  will 
open  their  arms  to  receive  her.  No,  no.  Her 
children  are  told  she  is  dead.  Her  husband 
wishes  to  see  no  more  of  her.  Her  own  mother 
consents  to  meet  her  only  at  a  public  restau- 
rant ;  and  the  woman  told  me  how  she  went,  with 
what  a  turbulent  heart  within  her,  and  with 
what  a  yearning  for  the  love  of  her  mother. 
But  the  reception  she  got  was  so  freezing  cold 
she  could  not  endure  it,  and  she  said,  '  ^  I  began 
to  ask  myself  whether  it  paid  to  be  good,  and  I 
turned  from  my  own  mother  and  came  back  to 


74  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

that  Salvation  Army  woman,  the  mother  of  my 
soul,  for  I  knew  that  in  her  I  had  a  love  which 
no  one  else  could  give  me. ' '  Ah !  was  not  Christ 
right  when  He  said,  if  we  only  love  those  who 
love  us,  what  reward  have  we?  Some  of  us, 
perhaps,  have  friends  who  have  cost  us  grief 
and  shame  and  misery,  and  we  know  how  we  feel 
about  them.  We  don't  wish  to  see  them  again. 
We  prefer  to  forget  them,  and — God  forgive 
us — we  almost  wish  they  were  dead.  That  is 
the  natural  feeling  of  grieved  and  wronged  and 
betrayed  human  love.  We  are  no  worse  than 
our  fellows,  it  may  be,  when  we  acknowledge 
such  feelings.  But  Christ  demands  that  if  we 
are  Christians  we  should  be  much  better  than 
our  fellows,  and  much  better  than  the  best  of 
our  fellows  according  to  the  flesh.  And,  oh! 
what  force  is  there  that  can  make  us  feel  kind 
even  to  our  own  kith  and  kin  who  have  bruised 
and  hurt  and  put  us  to  shame  by  their  conduct? 
What  but  the  love  of  Him  who,  being  sinless, 
bore  the  sins  of  others,  who,  being  just,  died  for 
the  unjust  that  He  might  bring  us  to  God,  and 
never  complained  of  the  injustice  of  it !  Human 
love  failed  that  poor  woman  in  her  worst  need. 
Where  human  love  fails,  Christ's  love  comes  in 
to  the  rescue,  and  by  this  **  we  know  that  we 
have  passed  from  death  unto  life,  because  we 
love  the  brethren." 
I  proclaim,  then,  that  there  is  only  one  kind  of 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE   75 

love  that  is  truly  social — that  is  to  say,  there  is 
only  one  kind  of  love  which  is  able  to  regenerate 
and  to  unite  society — and  that  is  the  kind  of  love 
which  Jesus  has  taught  the  world.  I  am  coming 
to  see  that  it  is  of  a  very  little  use  to  talk  to  any 
class  of  men  about  their  obligations  and  their 
duties  to  some  other  class.  ^^  Duty/'  says 
Ibsen,  in  one  of  his  dramas,  '^  is  a  cold,  hard 
word, ' '  and  obligation  is  a  still  colder  and  a  yet 
harder  word.  We  may  talk  to  the  rich  till  we 
are  dumb  with  much  talking  about  their  obliga- 
tions to  the  ignorant  and  the  uninstructed ;  and 
to  the  refined  about  their  obligations  to  the  bar- 
barous and  the  brutal.  The  general  conscience 
is  not  sensitive  enough  to  respond  to  such  ap- 
peals. The  crust  of  class  and  caste  is  too  thick 
to  be  penetrated  by  these  toy  arrows  of  mere 
argument.  We  must  melt  the  obstacle.  We 
cannot  penetrate  it,  just  as  we  cannot  pierce  the 
iceberg,  which  floats,  a  glittering  peril,  on  the 
mid- Atlantic ;  but  it  can  be  dissolved  in  the 
warm  tides  of  love,  as  the  iceberg  is  dissolved 
when  the  warm  Gulf  Stream  flows  around  its 
base.  No  man  ever  yet  took  up  work  among  the 
poor  from  a  mere  sense  of  obligation,  or  if  he 
did,  I  am  sure  he  soon  grew  weary  in  well-doing. 
And  if  there  are  any  of  you  here  who  are  en- 
gaged in  such  work  I  appeal  to  you  to  tell  me 
whether  you  have  ever  done  such  work  merely 
from  a  sense  of  social  obligation,  or  whether  it 


76  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

has  not  always  been  done  because  you  have  felt 
the  sense  of  social  love?  We  must  love  the 
poor  before  we  can  really  help  them.  We  must 
love  them  in  their  lowest  and  most  repulsive 
aspects.  We  must  love  them  with  that  Divine 
charity  which  * '  believeth  all  things  and  hopeth 
all  things.''  We  must  honour  them  as  Christ 
did,  beholding  still  upon  ''  their  foreheads  the 
secret  star  from  the  Benediction  on  the  Mount. ' ' 
By  this  we  know  whether  we  are  a  people  trying 
to  fulfil  an  obligation  or  are  a  people  who  have 
the  genuine  love  of  souls ;  whether  we  are  doing 
our  work  from  a  sense  of  duty  or  from  a  passion 
for  souls:  do  we  love  the  brethren? 

But  3^ou  may  say,  '^  How  are  we  to  accom- 
plish an  act  which,  according  to  your  own 
showing,  is  so  manifestly  difficult  to  human 
nature?  ''  By  remembering  one  thing  which 
Jesus  Christ  never  forgot — it  was  the  key-note 
of  all  His  thoughts — we  must  remember  the 
divinity  of  human  nature.  There  is,  as  Mr.  T. 
Q.  Selby  has  reminded  us,  ^'  a  buried  magnifi- 
cence ''  in  many  a  man  of  whom  you  think  ill, 
and  have  reason  to  think  ill,  just  as  yonder,  out 
in  the  vast  desert,  but  a  little  way  down  beneath 
the  brown  sand,  the  drift  of  centuries,  there 
often  lies  a  city  with  all  its  temples,  its  palaces, 
its  marbles,  and  its  paintings,  perfect  and  com- 
plete. For  centuries  men  ride  to  and  fro  across 
the  desert,  and  the  great  caravans  pass  from 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE   77 

East  to  West,  and  no  one  sees  anything  more 
than  the  desert  and  the  drifted  sand  there.  Yet 
all  the  time  the  hidden  city  is  there;  and  some 
day  there  comes  one  who  knows,  and  he  begins 
to  dig,  and  there  comes  to  light  a  splendour  that 
was  hidden,  a  picture  that  was  covered  up.  So 
in  many  a  man  there  is  a  hidden  temple,  there  is 
a  buried  splendour.  Nay,  I  should  not  say  in 
many  a  man;  it  is  in  every  man,  only  we  have 
not  the  faith  to  believe  it,  and  we  have  not  the 
eyes  to  discover  it.  Have  you  ever  heard 
Dvorak's  ^^  Symphony  to  the  New  World  '^  per- 
formed! I  need  not  tell  you  it  is  a  magnificent 
piece  of  music.  Wlien  I  first  heard  it,  as  the 
great  s^Taphony  went  on  I  was  strangely  im- 
pressed with  a  curious  sense  of  something 
familiar  about  it.  I  could  not  make  it  out. 
There  was  the  great  orchestra  playing  what 
sounded  magnificent  music — and  it  was  magnifi- 
cent music — yet  all  the  while  I  seemed  to  hear 
behind  it  something  I  had  heard  a  thousand 
times  before,  and  then  I  found  out  what  it  was. 
Why,  the  ''  Symphony  to  the  New  World  "  is 
made  up,  for  the  main  part,  of  negro  melodies 
and  plaintive  airs,  such  as  **  Swing  low,  sweet 
chariot."  Mere  negro  melodies!  Little  deli- 
cate threads  of  song  begotten  in  the  souls  of 
slaves !  Ah,  but  see  what  a  great  musician  can 
make  of  them!  So  there  is  a  little  thread  of 
divinest  melody  running  through  the  poor,  heart 


78         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

of  man.  Christ  takes  these  threads  of  melody 
into  His  own  most  perfect  life,  and  shows  what 
the  music  of  humanity  is ;  and  looking  at  Christ 
in  His  perfection,  we  look  through  Christ  to  man 
in  his  deepest  degradation,  and  we  see  that  the 
man  lowest  in  the  mire  has  the  thread  of  melody 
in  his  heart,  which  may  become  a  great  music  in 
Christ.  It  is  there  waiting  to  be  discovered, 
and  we  must  remember  the  dignity  of  human 
nature  if  we  are  to  begin  to  feel  about  man  as 
Christ  felt. 

I  remember  years  ago,  when  the  life  of  Liv- 
ingstone was  published,  being  greatly  im- 
pressed by  a  certain  episode  Livingstone  de- 
scribed— a  poor  African  woman  lying  by  the 
roadside  afflicted  with  a  peculiarly  repulsive 
disease.  The  picture  was  so  vivid  that  it  made 
me  shudder,  for  I  was  at  that  period  of  youth 
which  is  ultra-sensitive  to  pain ;  and  I  wondered 
how  Livingstone  could  bring  himself  even  to 
touch  that  dreadful  woman  by  the  roadside. 
And  then  I  read  on,  and  as  I  read  on,  I  came 
across  words  of  such  passionate  tenderness  that 
before  I  had  finished  the  page  I  understood  how 
it  was  that  Livingstone  could  touch  that  poor, 
repulsive  woman  with  her  dreadful  disease. 
He  saw  in  her  a  creature  for  whom  Christ  died. 
He  saw  in  her  a  fragment  of  God  Himself.  He 
recognised  that  this  soul,  dumb,  confused, 
ignorant,  was  still  an  immortal  soul  compared 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE    79 

with  which,  in  value,  all  the  gold  of  Ophir  and 
all  the  diamond-fields  of  South  Africa  were  but 
as  the  dust  in  the  balance.  Surely  it  was  that 
conviction  of  the  divinity  in  man,  and  that  alone, 
which  could  have  nerved  Livingstone  to  endure 
his  life  of  solitary  toil  among  savage  races  who 
seemed  scarcely  human.  And  was  not  the  faith 
that  Livingstone  had  in  the  divinity  of  human 
nature  justified  when,  many  years  later,  there 
emerged  from  that  Dark  Continent  those  two 
faithful  servants  of  his,  who  bore  his  body  over 
land  and  sea  to  its  place  of  honourable  rest  in 
Westminster  Abbey  1  Livingstone 's  faith  in  the 
African  race  was  vindicated.  Faith  in  mankind 
is  vindicated  still.  It  is  a  very  striking  thing 
that  those  who  know  most  about  human  nature 
in  its  worst  aspects  are  those  who  think  the 
best  of  it.  It  is  so.  It  is  not  among  those  who 
handle  and  see  the  open  sores  of  humanity  that 
you  will  find  despair  of  humanity.  They  know 
too  much  of  the  infinite  depths  of  patience  and 
sweetness  and  kindness  that  are  concealed 
beneath  the  grime  of  sin  and  ignorance,  and  it  is 
not  among  these  that  you  find  the  pessimist  and 
the  cynic.  The  pessimist  and  the  c^Tiic  are 
those  who  stand  afar  off  and  pass  by  on  the 
other  side.  Those  who  handle  the  wounded 
traveller  know  him  best.  Bring  love,  not  scorn, 
to  your  task,  and  you  will  always  find  that  your 
love  is  justified  as  the  one  Divine  force  for-  the 


80         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

social  regeneration  of  mankind.  Men  know  the 
man  who  loves  them.  Dull  as  they  may  be,  they 
are  able  to  discern  the  difference,  believe  me, 
between  the  man  who  serves  them  for  obligation 
and  the  man  who  serves  them  for  love.  The 
miraculous  ministry  is  always  the  loving  min- 
istry. ^*  I  could  tell  you,"  said  a  friend  of 
Father  Dolling,  '^  of  miracles  of  healing  that 
have  been  wrought  by  Dolling.''  And  then  he 
goes  on  to  give  an  instance  of  how  a  young 
soldier  said  to  him,  *^  Father  Dolling  laid  his 
hand  upon  my  head,  and  I  don't  know  why,  but 
I  told  all  that  I  had  ever  done."  Ah!  but  we 
know  why.  We  know  that  there  is  often  more 
of  the  Gospel  of  love  in  a  touch,  in  a  glance,  in 
a  hand-grasp,  than  there  is  many  a  sermon. 

Oh !  brothers  and  sisters,  if  you  are  far  from 
God,  there  is  a  hand  laid  upon  you,  even  now, 
the  hand  that  was  pierced  for  you.  Friends 
may  have  cast  you  out;  there  is  a  Friend  that 
sticketh  closer  than  a  brother.  Domestic  love 
may  have  failed  you  in  your  worst  need.  The 
love  of  Christ  cannot  fail  you,  leper  as  you  are, 
stained  with  gross  sin,  and  hating  yourself  for 
your  sin.  Look  up  into  the  eyes  of  Christ. 
You  will  find  no  repulsion  there,  only  love,  pity, 
pardon ;  and  in  the  hour  when  you  thus  come  to 
Christ  with  a  heart  broken  and  softened  with  a 
sense  of  His  Divine  love  for  you,  you  also  shall 
pass  from  death  unto  life  and  become  a  new 


SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  LOVE   81 

creature  in  Christ  Jesus.  Brother,  sister, 
come !  Cast  out  by  man,  there  is  still  hospital- 
ity in  the  heart  of  God  for  you,  for  me,  for  us 
all,  and  for  the  whole  wide  world. 

"  For  the  love  of  God  is  wider 

Than  the  measures  of  man's  mind, 
And  the  heart  of  the  Eternal 
Is  most  wonderfully  kind." 


Ill 

OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER 

{Plymouth  Church,  Sunday  Morning,  November  13, 1904.) 

MY  subject  this  morning  is :  ^ '  Our  Duty 
to  the  Bystander,"  and  my  text  will 
be  found  in  John  xi.  42 :  ^  ^  But  because 
of  the  people  which  stand  by  I  said  it,  that  they 
may  believe  that  Thou  hast  sent  Me. ' '  There  is 
a  life  of  little  perspective  and  there  is  a  life  of 
large  perspective.  There  is  a  personal  view  of 
life  and  a  collective  view  of  life ;  there  is  a  life 
circumscribed  by  its  own  hopes  and  gains ;  there 
is  a  life  which  merges  itself  in  the  world's  life, 
and  "•  he  only  lives  in  the  world's  life  who  has 
renounced  his  own."  Jesus  gives  us  a  sublime 
example  of  a  life  of  large  perspective.  We  are 
too  much  accustomed  to  see  life  at  a  point,  at  an 
angle :  Jesus  saw  life  as  a  whole  and  in  its  com- 
pleteness. Look  for  a  moment  upon  the  scene 
which  is  presented  to  us  in  this  chapter.  Here 
are  broken  hearts  gathered  round  a  grave. 
Here  is  the  wreck  and  ruin  and  disaster  of  a 
household.  Before  the  eyes  of  Jesus  stand 
Martha,  with  her  fortitude  quite  gone;  Mary, 
with  her  quiet  despair ;  and  a  group  of  weeping 


OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER    83 

friends,  who  can  see  nothing  in  all  the  universe 
beyond  the  grave  of  Lazarus.  Here  is  surely 
enough  to  fill  the  eye,  enough  to  absorb  the  sym- 
pathy ;  but  even  in  this  climax  of  personal  emo- 
tion the  eye  of  Jesus  rests  upon  something  that 
lies  beyond  the  circumference  of  personal  emo- 
tion. He  sees  not  one  broken  household,  but 
many;  not  one  tortured  heart,  but  the  heart  of 
the  world  itself  with  all  its  wounds.  He  sees 
the  people  that  stand  by.  He  thinks  of  them, 
and  so,  when  Jesus  prays  for  the  miraculous 
power  of  God  to  descend  upon  Him,  we  are  told, 
*^  Because  of  the  people  that  stand  by  I  said 
it,  that  they  may  believe  that  Thou  hast  sent 
Me.'' 

Now  how  are  we  to  interpret  this  phrase  for 
our  edification  and  instruction!  Let  me  inter- 
pret it  by  one  of  the  plainest  facts  in  human 
nature,  namely,  the  natural  tendency  there  is  in 
human  life  toward  isolation  and  selfishness. 
There  are  few  things  in  life  more  selfish  than 
our  love  and  our  grief.  Even  our  love  is  selfish. 
We  bind  another  to  our  delight.  We  elect  the 
object  of  our  love  and  straightway  we  seek  to 
surround  the  object  with  a  jealous  and  sacred 
isolation.  Let  your  thoughts  range  for  a  single 
instant  over  the  lyric  love-poetry  of  the  world, 
over  the  great  fictions  of  the  world,  and  is  not 
the  note  which  is  continually  struck  this  note  of 
isolation  as  the  prerogative  of  love  I    There  is  a 


84         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

kind  of  love  which  draws  its  magic  circle  around 
its  object,  builds  its  guarded  paradise,  holds  it  a 
sacred  thing  to  reserve  itself  from  human  con- 
tact, and  seeks  in  all  things  separation  from  the 
world's  life.  Still  more  selfish  is  our  grief.  It 
is  the  prescriptive  right  of  grief  to  seek  isola- 
tion from  the  world.  The  very  symbols  of 
mourning  are  the  drawn  blind  and  the  closed 
door  and  the  separate  and  sad  way.  Grief  pro- 
jects its  own  personal  emotion  over  the  whole 
world,  and  so,  when  Beatrice  dies,  Dante  looks 
upon  the  crowded  city  of  Florence,  with  all  its 
gay  and  intricate  and  splendid  life,  and  says, 
^ '  How  is  the  city  desolate  that  was  full  of  peo- 
ple. ' '  The  city  did  not  exist  for  him.  He  for- 
got the  bystander.  The  broken  heart,  as  well  as 
the  heart  surfeited  with  love,  is  always  prone  to 
forget  the  bystander. 

Now  the  striking  thing  in  the  temper  of  our 
Lord  is  that  He  was  absolutely  free  from  these 
tendencies. 

Love,  as  Jesus  understood  the  word,  is  a  big 
word,  a  catholic  word,  an  immeasurable  word. 
^ '  If  ye  love  them  that  love  you,  what  thank  have 
ye?  ''  said  Jesus;  and  thus  it  is  in  the  name  of 
love  that  Christ  protests  against  the  narrowness 
of  love.  For  love,  as  Christ  conceives  it,  is 
an  immense  wave  of  charity,  a  living  warmth 
of  soul.  It  touches  not  only  one 's  kith  and  kin, 
but  the  lonely  and  the  outcast.    * '  It  makes  the 


OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER    85 

whole  world  kin  ' ' — it  remembers  the  bystander. 
Where  does  Christ  get  His  conception  of  a  love 
such  as  this  ?  He  finds  the  sanction  of  this  kind 
of  love  in  the  nature  of  God  Himself.  Have  you 
ever  considered  the  words  in  which  Jesus  de- 
scribed the  nature  of  God — how  strange,  how 
original,  how  revolutionary  they  must  have 
sounded  to  those  who  heard  them? — ^'  He 
maketh  His  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the 
good,  and  is  kind  to  the  unthankful  also.'' 
Why,  in  that  single  sentence  Christ  destroyed 
the  whole  structure  of  Judaism:  He  destroyed 
the  theory  of  a  peculiar  people,  an  elect  race,  a 
chosen  tribe,  governed  and  led  by  a  tribal  God ; 
He  revealed  God  as  caring  for  the  bystanders, 
caring  for  the  outsiders,  caring  for  the  race — 
His  love,  like  sunshine,  falling  with  a  glad 
warmth  and  equal  diffusion  of  light  upon  all 
men,  whatever  their  condition  and  whatever 
their  degree  of  hostility  to  the  Divine  Father. 
I  take  it  that  that  saying  of  Christ's  is  the 
greatest  truth  ever  uttered  by  human  lips,  and 
the  most  startling. 

Just  as  Jesus  denied  the  right  of  love  to  love 
only  its  chosen  object  and  rest  there,  so  Jesus 
denied  the  right  to  sorrow  to  think  only  of  itself. 
Here  is  a  man  who  comes  to  Jesus  and  presents 
what  might  seem  the  most  sacred  kind  of  plea 
to  be  excused  from  the  service  of  the  race.  He 
says :  ^ '  My  father  is  dead ;  let  me  go  and  bury 


86         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

my  father,  and  then  I  will  think  about  this  great 
matter  of  serving  the  race."  Jesus  replies, 
*  ^  Let  the  dead  bury  their  dead :  follow  thou 
Me."  Does  that  reply  seem  strange,  hard,  in- 
explicable! It  is  not  so,  when  you  see  its  true 
meaning,  which  is,  that  the  needs  of  the  race 
must  always  stand  before  all  personal  claims 
and  even  before  all  personal  sorrows,  however 
sacred;  and  Christ's  own  conduct  makes  the 
principle  clear.  The  day  comes  when  His  own 
mother  stands  outside  upon  the  edge  of  the 
crowd  and  hears  what  seems  to  be  a  repudiation 
of  the  claims  of  motherhood  when  He  says, 
^^  Those  who  do  the  will  of  God  are  my  sister 
and  my  mother."  And  the  day  comes,  the 
darker  day,  when  Jesus  hangs  upon  the  Cross, 
and  surely  if  the  human  soul  might  claim  its 
own  loneliness  it  is  there,  surely  if  the  spirit  of 
man  might  ask  to  be  uninterrupted  it  is  in  that 
final  and  tragic  hour;  yet  Jesus  is  interrupted 
by  the  dying  thief  and  allows  the  man  to  inter- 
rupt the  sacred  silence  of  the  Cross  with  his  plea 
for  pity.  Even  on  the  Cross  Jesus  remembered 
the  bystander.  Here,  then,  it  seems  to  me,  is  a 
profound  truth.  Here  is  the  clue  to  Christ's 
thoughts  and  emotion  and  temper.  This  is  His 
message  to  the  world :  the  first  of  all  Christian 
ethics  is  to  think  of  others,  and  to  think  of 
others  before  we  think  of  ourselves.  Christ's 
life  is  a  life  of  large  perspective.    He  sees,  not 


OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER    87 

tlie  personal  aspect  only,  but  the  collective.  He 
sees,  not  the  immediate  only,  but  the  distant. 
No  anguish  of  heart  can  excuse  our  forgetful- 
ness  of  the  agony  of  others.  Affection  and 
hatred,  regarded  from  this  point  of  view,  are 
both  narrow  passions,  for  either  of  them  may 
isolate  us  from  our  fellow-men;  and  isolation 
from  man  always  means  distance  from  God. 
Therefore  we  also  must  remember  the  by- 
stander. 

The  key-note  of  Christ's  message  must  be  the 
key-note  of  our  message  also,  aye,  and  the  key- 
note of  our  life.  The  man  who  walks  along  the 
paths  of  his  ordered  life  and  never  remembers 
the  people  that  stand  by  does  not  understand 
the  spirit  of  Jesus.  '^  Well,''  you  will  say, 
^*  what  are  we  to  remember  about  the  by- 
stander? " 

First  of  all,  I  would  reply  with  what  seems  to 
be  so  trite  a  thing  that  it  sounds  almost  foolish : 
First  of  all,  you  are  to  remember  that  the  by- 
stander exists.  And  perhaps  it  is  not  so  foolish 
a  statement,  after  all,  if  you  recollect  that  the 
plainest  fact  about  our  social  life  is  this  temper 
of  isolation.  We  are  all  apt  to  forget  that  the 
bystander  so  much  as  exists.  Look  at  it  in  re- 
gard to  nationality.  ^'  God  hath  made  of  one 
blood  all  nations  of  men  to  dwell  on  the  face  of 
the  earth,"  says  the  Apostle ;  and  if  that  be  true 
the  plain  corollary  is  universal  human  brother- 


88         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

hood.  But  what  was  the  condition  of  the  world, 
considered  socially,  at  the  time  when  Paul 
spoke  1  It  had  Eome,  with  its  immense  pride  of 
power,  tramping  across  Europe,  making  a  deso- 
lation and  calling  it  peace;  and  it  had  Greece, 
with  its  immense  pride  of  intellect,  regarding 
all  other  nations  outside  the  charmed  circle  of 
its  culture  as  barbarians.  Here  were  two  great 
nations,  creating  a  ring-fence  of  privilege,  and 
counting  all  nations  outside  that  fence  of  privi- 
lege outcast.  One  of  the  things  that  always  fills 
me  with  astonishment,  as  I  read  the  history  of 
Eome,  is  the  cruelty  of  Rome.  It  fills  me  with 
amazement  to  think  that  a  people  that  had  such 
a  magnificent  mastery  of  the  fine  arts  and  had 
done  such  magnificent  work  in  literature  could 
still  be  cruel  enough  to  have  an  amphitheatre 
where  men  were  butchered  to  make  a  Roman 
holiday.  But  the  explanation  is  simple  enough. 
It  was  the  bitter  contempt  that  Rome  had  for 
humanity  that  made  her  cruel.  She  laid  it  down 
as  a  principle,  that  the  gladiator  had  no  rights, 
no  claims  to  consideration.  He  was  meant  to  be 
a  slave,  born  to  be  a  creature  of  a  lower  order. 
Rome  forgot  the  bystander.  The  Roman  Em- 
pire was  thus  an  empire  built  on  slavery,  and 
that  was  the  secret  of  its  corruption  and  of  its 
final  downfall. 

Rome  perished  because  she  forgot  the  by- 
stander, and  the  fact  is  of  deep  significance  for 


OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER    89 

us.  Let  me  try  to  make  this  significance  clear 
by  a  single  question — Is  there  any  just  and  in- 
controvertible reason  why  there  should  not  be 
a  United  States  of  America  and  Europe — 
English,  American,  French,  German,  Austrian, 
Italian,  Spanish,  Russian — all  united  in  one 
peaceful  and  progressive  federation!  They  are 
of  one  blood,  brethren  by  titles  manifold.  They 
follow  a  common  learning,  they  share  common 
institutions,  they  have  a  common  faith,  yet  they 
are  divided,  are  suspicious  of  each  other,  and 
bitterly  hostile.  And  why?  Because  the  ar- 
rogance of  a  false  patriotism  is  constantly 
fomenting  strife  and  misunderstanding. 

This  false  patriotism  does  something  more 
and  something  worse ;  it  provokes  wars.  It  is 
the  very  essence  of  false  patriotism  to  ridicule 
and  defame  other  nations,  to  gibe  and  jeer  at 
their  peculiarities,  to  underrate  their  abilities, 
to  expose  their  vices,  and  to  flaunt  our  own 
superiority.  *^  We  are  the  people;  there  is 
none  beside.''  So  we  speak,  and  the  result  is 
uncounted  millions  wasted  on  warlike  prepara- 
tions, and  rings  of  forts  upon  the  frontiers,  and 
standing  armies  and  financial  extravagance 
followed  by  national  poverty  and  a  growing 
spirit  of  distrust  and  hatred,  which  at  any  time 
may  break  forth  in  the  red  flame  of  war.  We 
are  all  apt  to  forget  the  bystander  in  these  in- 
ternational rivalries,  to  think  of  other  people 


90         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

as  inferior,  to  talk  of  their  defects,  and  to  for- 
get their  virtues.  And  it  is  that  temper  which 
has  been  at  the  root  of  every  great  war  that  has 
stained  the  earth  with  blood. 

The  first  thing,  if  we  would  reach  a  better  age, 
is  that  we  must  remember  the  existence  of  the 
bystander ;  remember  that  he  is  a  man  like  our- 
selves ;  that  he  has  tastes  and  powers  and  emo- 
tions the  same  as  our  own;  remember  that  he 
lives  and  suffers  and  endures  and  has  great 
virtues.  Jesus  never  forgot  the  bystander,  and 
that  is  why  ^^  the  common  people  heard  Him 
gladly.- 

Then  the  next  thing  we  have  to  remember 
about  the  bystander  is,  not  only  that  he  exists, 
but  that  he  has  needs  that  make  a  demand  upon 
us.  That  was  precisely  what  Jesus  was  re- 
membering in  this  scene.  Will  you  look  again 
upon  this  group  of  people  at  the  graveside! 
Will  you  remember  that  these  people  were 
mostly  Pharisees,  the  friends  of  the  dead 
Lazarus  1  We  know  what  Christ  thought  about 
Pharisees.  We  know  that  they  had  no  sym- 
pathy with  His  ideals.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
awful  facts  of  the  Gospels,  to  my  mind,  that  the 
harshest  and  most  terrible  words  that  Jesus 
speaks  are  spoken  to  the  people  you  would  call 
good  people.  The  vices  which  Christ  de- 
nounces most  bitterly  are  not  the  vices  that 
defile  the  flesh,  but  those  which  ruin  the  spirit— 


OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER    91 

pride,  bitterness,  malice.  And  round  the  grave 
of  Lazarus  there  stand  the  very  people  whom 
He  found  most  repulsive,  intractable,  and 
antagonistic  to  Him — a  group  of  Pharisees! 
Yet  He  remembers  them,  and  because  of  these 
people  that  stand  by — people  antagonistic  to 
Him  at  every  point — He  said  this  word,  *^  that 
they  might  believe. ' ' 

We  have  to  remember  the  needs  of  the  "by- 
stander.  The  greater  the  ignorance,  the  bit- 
terer the  hostility,  the  more  intractable  the  tem- 
per of  the  bystander  may  be,  the  greater  need  he 
has  of  us.  Where  there  is  need  there  is  obliga- 
tion, and  we  dare  no  more  refuse  to  fulfil  our 
obligation  on  the  grounds  of  personal  antipathy 
than  the  surgeon  or  doctor  dare  refuse  to  at- 
tend a  certain  man  because  his  manners  are 
not  satisfactory  or  his  countenance  ugly.  Here 
is  a  matter  that  touches  the  life  of  our  Churches 
very  closely.  Dr.  Dale  once  said,  in  a  phrase 
which  was  often  quoted  against  him,  that  Con- 
gregationalism stood  for  the  aristocracy  of  the 
middle  class.  It  was  an  unfortunate  statement 
to  have  made,  because  it  has  led  to  the  natural 
inference  that  Congregationalism  has  stood 
only,  and  stands  only,  for  a  certain  class;  and 
if  we  are  going  to  gather  together  in  our 
Churches  only  a  certain  class — the  people  we 
like  and  the  people  who  like  us,  the  people  of  a 
similar  social  grade,  the  people  of  a  similarly 


92         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

cultivated  taste — ^what  we  are  doing  is  creating 
clubs  but  we  are  not  creating  Churclies. 

We  shall  never  get  our  thinking  upon  these 
themes  right  until  we  substitute  for  the  word 
^  ^  charity, ' '  the  word  ' '  claim. "  It  is  not  charity 
men  ask  of  us,  it  is  opportunity.  We  say  that 
we  believe  in  the  immortal  soul  that  is  in  man. 
If  we  do,  can  we  ^'  to  men  benighted  the  lamp 
of  life  deny  ''?  There  is  no  more  terrible  pic- 
ture in  all  the  teaching  of  Christ  than  the 
picture  of  the  man  who  forgot  the  bystander. 
His  name  was  Dives  and  the  bystander  was  a 
beggar  at  the  gate,  called  Lazarus;  and  Dives 
came  out  of  his  house,  through  prosperous 
years,  and  never  so  much  as  saw  the  beggar  in 
his  rags ;  and  the  torture,  the  agony,  the  punish- 
ment of  Dives  was  that  in  the  other  world  he 
had  to  remember  what  he  had  forgotten  here: 
the  bystander,  and  the  claim  of  the  bystander. 

Once  more,  you  have  to  remember  not  only 
the  existence  of  the  bystander  and  the  need  of 
the  bystander,  but  you  have  to  remember  the 
possibilities  of  the  bystander,  ^  ^  that  they  might 
believe. '^  And  Jesus  said  that  about  the 
Pharisees,  about  the  men  who  hated  Him,  men 
who  were  forging  the  nails  of  His  Cross,  ^ '  that 
they  might  believe''!  Shortly  before  I  left 
London  I  bought  at  a  bookseller's  a  little  book 
on  radium.  It  w^s  written  by  a  boy  of  eighteen 
— a  boy  educated  in  the  common  public  schools, 


OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER    93 

who,  in  his  garret,  under  the  grey  roofs  of  Lon^ 
don,  had  worked  out  for  himself  certain  con- 
clusions upon  radium,  and  had  had  the  courage 
to  publish  his  hook ;  and  a  reviewer,  in  speaking 
of  it,  said  something  like  this :  ' '  Under  these 
grey,  commonplace  roofs  of  London  and  in 
these  bare  garrets  are  the  masters  of  science 
who  will  shape  the  future.''  Ah,  my  friends, 
there  is  something  more  wonderful  under  the 
grey  roofs  of  Brooklyn,  of  New  York,  of  Lon- 
don this  morning;  there  are  the  spiritual  cap- 
tains of  the  future;  there  are  the  leaders  who 
are  to  fight  the  battle  of  advancing  progress  and 
liberty ;  there  are  the  martyrs  who  are  to  carry 
the  name  of  Jesus  to  the  dark  places  of  the 
earth.  Luther  lay  under  such  a  grey  roof  once, 
and  Livingstone,  and  Simon  Peter.  Who  would 
have  thought  of  finding  apostles  in  fishermen? 
Only  Jesus.  But  Jesus,  who  had  lain  in  huts 
where  poor  men  lie,  knew  of  the  treasure  in  the 
hut  of  the  poor  man  and  went  straight  to  the 
fisherman's  hut  to  find  apostles.  He  re- 
membered the  possibilities  that  are  in  the 
bystander. 

You  know  there  are  two  ways  of  viewing 
human  life.  One  I  might  call  the  microscopic 
and  the  other  the  telescopic.  A  great  many 
writers  of  our  own  day  use  the  microscopic 
method  only.  They  look  through  a  lighted  lens 
and  see  a  feeble  creature  full  of  weaknesses,  and 


94         THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

say,  '^  That  is  man.''  So  it  is.  Ah,  but  there 
is  a  telescopic  way,  too,  of  regarding  man,  and 
you  are  not  going  to  see  man  aright  until  you  see 
him  from  an  astronomic  point  of  view,  in  rela- 
tion to  the  stars,  and  to  the  rhythm  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  as  a  citizen  of  immensity.  Why,  you 
cannot  even  see  the  tiny  thread  of  an  insect's 
organism  aright  until  you  see  it  in  relation  to 
the  universal  scheme  of  life.  You  cannot  see  the 
grain  of  sand  aright  till  you  perceive  it  as  one 
in  substance  with  the  starry  worlds  that  wheel 
above  us,  nor  the  raindrop  aright  till  you  see  it 
lifted  into  clouds  and  woven  into  rainbows. 
The  microscope  only  tells  a  part  of  the  truth. 
There  is  another  part,  and  the  major  part  of  the 
truth,  which  lies  not  in  the  perception  of  the 
infinitely  small,  but  of  the  infinitely  great.  And 
it  is  so  with  man.  Here  is  what  the  microscope 
tells  you :  ' '  Dust  thou  art,  to  dust  thou  shalt 
return. ' '  Here  is  what  the  telescope  tells  you : 
*^  Now  are  we  the  sons  of  God  " — you,  I — the 
sons  of  God.  And  if  you  want  to  understand 
this  startling  truth,  take  a  man  like  Jacob — 
bring  him  out  and  put  him  under  the  micro- 
scope. Look  at  him;  rogue,  thief,  liar.  He  is 
all  that;  a  man  of  the  earth,  earthy.  You  are 
likely  to  say,  ^*  There  is  not  much  possibility 
there  of  the  development  of  a  soul."  Bring 
him  out  beneath  the  stars,  put  him  in  relation  to 
the  eternities,  and  what  do  you  find?    The  man 


OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER    95 

begins  to  dream,  and  he  is  not  dreaming  about 
herds  and  cattle;  he  is  dreaming  about  God. 
He  has  visions,  visions  not  of  wealth,  but  of 
angels  ascending  and  descending  upon  a  stair  of 
light.  Oh,  it  is  true  enough,  that  he  is  a  rogue, 
a  cheat,  a  liar,  but  it  is  also  true  that  there  is  a 
little  spiritual  fibre  in  him  that  I  may  call  a  soul, 
capable  of  receiving  the  vibrations  of  the  Divine 
light,  and  answering  to  them :  and  I  must  under- 
stand Bethel  as  well  as  Padan-aram  before  I 
can  understand  Jacob. 

And  so  I  look  beyond  these  walls  this  morning 
to  the  Jacobs  of  this  vast  city,  to  the  men  who 
are  stealing  fortunes,  or  going  through  any 
amount  of  dirty  work  to  get  them,  and  I  remem- 
ber Jacob,  and  I  know  that  somewhere  in  the 
man  who  is  hardest  there  is  a  little  quivering 
nerve,  a  tiny  spiritual  fibre — there  is  a  rudi- 
mentary soul — there  is  something  capable  of 
vibrating  to  God.  And  this  is  the  ground,  and 
the  only  ground,  for  my  hope  and  my  faith  this 
morning:  that  there  is  a  capacity  for  God  in 
every  one  who  is  listening  to  me  now.  Ever;f 
human  soul  is  a  point  of  contact  with  the  In- 
finite. I  tell  you  what  5^ou  know  to  be  true — 
that  all  the  power  of  Jesus  Christ  is  rushing 
toward  that  point  of  contact  in  your  heart  and 
life  now.  Just  as  the  Marconi  message  flies 
straight  to  the  instrument  that  is  keyed  up  to 
pitch  to  receive  it,  you  may  be  keyed  up  to  pitch 


96  THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

to  receive  the  incoming  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ. 
You — and  all  men — any  man. 

Of  all  these  vast  populations  around  us  to- 
day, of  the  million  and  three  hundred  thousand 
people  in  Brooklyn,  there  is  not  one  who  is  not  a 
saint  in  embryo ;  not  one  who  has  not  a  little  of 
the  spiritual  fibre  that  might  make  an  apostle ; 
and  every  lost  soul  is  an  accusation  against  the 
Church  and  every  ruined  life  is  ruined  through 
the  apostasy  of  the  Church.  ^  ^  It  is  not  the  will 
of  the  Father, '  ^  said  Jesus,  ^  *  that  one  of  these 
little  ones  should  perish.''  Whose  will  is  it, 
then  1  Why,  yours  and  mine,  when  we  go  upon 
our  blind,  selfish  way  and  forget  the  bystander. 

And  so  I  observe,  lastly,  that  Jesus  was  justi- 
fied in  His  attitude  to  the  bystander.  He  loved 
the  people.  He  loved  the  common  people,  and 
the  people  loved  Him.  Why,  it  was  one  who 
stood  by,  was  it  not,  who  washed  His  feet  with 
tears,  and  who  wiped  them  with  the  hair  of  her 
head — ' '  a  woman  who  was  a  sinner  "  ?  It  was 
one  who  stood  by,  a  woman  out  of  whom  He  had 
cast  seven  devils,  who  was  last  at  the  Cross  and 
the  first  at  the  sepulchre,  and  0  what  a  soul 
there  must  have  been  in  that  woman  whom  we 
know  as  Mary  Magdalene!  It  was  one  who 
stood  by  who  looked  at  the  gathering  darkness 
around  the  Cross  and  said  what  no  priest,  what 
no  ruler  in  Israel  had  the  grace  or  vision  to  say : 
**  This  is  a  just  man.    This  is  the  Son  of  God." 


OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  BYSTANDER    97 

It  was  one  who  stood  by,  a  robber  and  male- 
factor, who  offered  to  Jesus  in  the  last  moment 
of  his  life  the  fragrance  of  his  penitence,  the 
frankincense  of  his  love.  Jesus  was  justified 
in  His  estimate  of  the  bystander.  My  brethren, 
He  waits  to  be  justified  in  us.  Is  there  any  one 
here  this  morning  who  would  refuse  a  really 
loyal  and  tender  friendship  if  it  were  offered 
him?  Why,  no.  The  world  is  too  lonely  for 
us  to  refuse  love  or  friendship  from  any  heart 
capable  of  loving  us ;  and  Jesus  offers  us  Him- 
self. He  would  be  your  friend,  your  Saviour, 
your  Redeemer.  He  stretches  out  to  you  His 
hand,  the  hand  wounded  for  your  transgres- 
sions. He  opens  to  you  His  heart,  the  heart 
bruised  for  your  iniquities.  Ah,  shall  we  not 
even  now,  each  for  himself  and  herself,  make 
the  glad  and  sweet  confession — 

**  Thou,  O  Christ,  art  all  I  want, 
More  than  all  in  thee  I  find  "  ? 

And  He  who  was  the  people's  Christ  shall 
surely  have  the  people 's  love.  Yea,  '  ^  He  shall 
have  the  heathen  for  His  inheritance,  and  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  for  His  posses- 


IV 

THE  UNAVOIDABLE  CHRIST 

{Plymouth  Church,  Sunday  Evening,  November  18,  1904.) 

THE  text  I  am  going  to  speak  upon  to- 
night is  found  in  John  xx.  26 :  ^ '  Then 
came  Jesus,  the  door  being  shut,  and 
stood  in  the  midst."  The  doors  were  shut. 
Not  only  the  doors  of  the  room  where  the  dis- 
ciples met,  but  the  doors  of  the  mind,  the  doors 
of  the  reason,  the  doors  of  hope  and  faith. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Thomas,  the  chief 
figure  in  this  pathetic  story,  had  finally  rejected 
the  thought  of  Christ's  resurrection.  He  be- 
lieved that  he  had  seen  the  end  of  Jesus.  Some- 
thing of  Christ  might  yet  live  in  the  thoughts  of 
men  as  an  influence,  a  memory,  an  impulse,  just 
as  the  dead  flower  leaves  a  certain  perfume  be- 
hind it,  but  the  flower  of  this  Divine  life  would 
bloom  no  more,  and  the  perfume  of  that  life 
would  be  a  diminishing  perfume.  It  is  so  with 
all  dead  men.  When  once  the  active,  living  pres- 
ence is  withdrawn  the  memory  of  the  dead,  how- 
ever well  beloved,  grows  faint  and  fades.  The 
doors  were  shut  then,  the  impenetrable  doors 
of  the  sepulchre  against  which  the  frail  hands 

98 


THE  UNAVOIDABLE  CHRIST        99 

of  love  beat  and  bled  in  vain;  the  doors  of  the 
reason,  the  doors  of  faith,  and  ''  then  came 
Jesus."  In  spite  of  the  closed  doors  He  stood 
in  the  midst.  Henceforth  He  was  to  fill  all 
things.  He  was  to  take  possession  of  the 
world;  He  was  to  glide  with  the  softness  and 
potency  of  light  into  the  darkest  hut  where  poor 
men  lay,  into  the  secret  chamber  of  the  rich 
man's  palace,  and  into  the  sealed  shrines  of  the 
pagan  temple.  He  was  the  unavoidable  Christ, 
the  Christ  who  was  to  be  met  everywhere,  ful- 
filling His  great  and  strange  word :  '  ^  Lo,  I  am 
with  you  all  the  days  to  the  consummation  of 
the  age." 

This,  then,  is  my  theme  to-night:  ^^  The  Un- 
avoidable Christ."  Broadly  stated,  what  it 
means  is  this :  that  it  is  impossible  for  any  one 
of  us  to  order  our  lives  in  such  a  way  as  to  avoid 
Christ.  Like  some  great,  snow-clad  dome, 
Christ  rises  over  the  landscape  of  human  life 
and  history,  and  turn  your  eyes  where  you  will, 
in  any  direction,  you  cannot  escape  His  pres- 
ence. Every  path  leads  to  Him,  for  in  every 
path  there  is  a  Cross.  He  has  linked  His  life 
with  the  general  life  of  man  at  so  many  points 
that,  however  hostile  or  indifferent  we  may  be 
to  Him,  yet  we  have  to  say,  ^  ^  Whither  can  I  flee 
from  Thy  Spirit?  "  And  Christ  did  this  de- 
liberately. He  had  no  need  to  write  His  teach- 
ings upon  perishable  parchments,  because  He 


100       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

interwove  Himself  in  the  very  fibres  of  human 
life.  He  has  made  it  impossible  for  us  to  think 
of  any  salient  aspect  of  human  life  without 
thinking  of  Him.  Where  love  is,  there  is  Christ. 
Where  the  poor  are,  there  is  the  Divine  poor 
Man,  who  says,  '^  Whoso  does  a  kindness  unto 
one  of  these  does  it  unto  Me. ' '  Nay,  more,  so  in- 
terwoven is  His  story  with  human  thought  that 
where  childhood  is,  there  is  Bethlehem;  where 
sorrow  is,  there  is  Gethsemane ;  where  death  is, 
there  is  Calvary.  Instinctively  our  thoughts 
meet  and  gather  and  settle  around  the  sacred 
pictures  of  Christ's  life  and  death.  In  all  that 
concerns  our  own  living  and  our  own  dying  our 
thoughts  are  drawn  toward  Jesus. 

So  then,  you  may  avoid  the  church,  and  you 
may  avoid  the  Bible,  and  you  may  avoid  the 
company  of  Christian  people,  but  you  cannot 
avoid  Jesus  Christ.  He  will  meet  you  where 
you  least  think  of  Him.  He  will  meet  you  on 
the  race-course,  on  the  football  field,  in  the  office, 
or  in  the  home.  He  will  look  at  you  with  sad 
eyes  in  the  house  of  shameful  pleasure.  He 
will  pass  you  in  the  street,  in  the  garb  of  a  beg- 
gar and  outcast;  He  will  sit  beside  you  in  the 
solitary  room  where  you  nurse  the  remembered 
sweetness  of  your  sin  or  rage  against  yourself 
for  your  folly.  Shut  the  door  against  Him. 
Bar  it  firm  with  hostility  and  hatred!  Never- 
theless you  cannot  escape  Christ;  ''  The  door 


THE  UNAVOIDABLE  CHRIST      101 

being    shut,    Jesus    came    and    stood    in    the 
midst." 

Now  there  are  many  illustrations  of  this  phe- 
nomenon. Let  me  recall,  for  instance,  the  name 
of  the  famous  German  poet,  Heine.  You,  who 
have  read  any  of  his  poetry  and  who  know  any- 
thing of  his  life,  will  remember  how  he  raged 
against  the  justice  of  God;  how,  as  he  lay  on 
the  mattress-grave,  suffering  inexplicable  agony 
and  loneliness,  he  said  that  the  irony  of  the 
Almighty  lay  heavy  upon  him.  Do  you  remem- 
ber, too,  that  when  he  came  to  the  end  of  his  life 
he  said  this — Heine,  the  brilliant  poet,  the  mas- 
ter of  irony  himself :  ^  ^  At  last  I  have  to  stand 
upon  the  same  platform  with  Uncle  Tom. ' '  Or 
another  illustration.  You  remember  in  the  life 
of  George  Eliot  how  she  tells  you  she  translated 
Strauss '  '  ^  Life  of  Jesus  ' '  till  she  was  Strauss- 
sick;  working  upon  the  book,  translating  the 
passages  that  dissolved  the  Christian  faith  into 
nebulous  shadows,  with  a  crucifix  before  her, 
and  only  able  to  continue  her  toil  by  an  effort  of 
the  will  which  triumphed  over  her  spiritual  sen- 
sibilities. And  this  same  woman,  a  little  later, 
is  painting  for  you  Dinah  Morris  preaching  on 
the  village  green  and  announcing  this  great  Gos- 
pel, this  evangelical  message,  which  came,  not 
only  from  the  lips  of  Dinah  Morris,  but  from 
the  heart  of  Dinah  Morris's  creator,  ^'  Our 
blessed  Saviour  has  shown  us  what  God's  heart 


102       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

is,  and  what  are  His  feelings  toward  us." 
George  Eliot  could  not  escape  the  Christ.  The 
unavoidable  Christ  entered  into  her  life.  Go 
back  further.  You  remember  the  striking  and 
wonderful  legend  which  we  speak  of  as  ^^  Quo 
Vadis  '^ — how  Peter  a  second  time  plays  the 
coward  and  turns  away  from  Eome  because  the 
shadow  of  death  is  falling  over  the  city,  and 
flies  across  the  Campagna,  and,  as  he  flies,  is 
met  by  a  vision  of  his  Master — 

"  Lo,  on  the  darkness  brake  a  wandering  ray, 
A  vision  flashed  along  the  Appian  way ; 
Divinely  on  the  pagan  night  it  shone, 
A  mournful  Face,  a  Figure  hurrying  on ; 
Though  haggard,  and  dishevelled,  frail  and  worn, 
A  King  of  David's  lineage,  crowned  with  thorn. 
'  Lord,  whither  farest  ? '  Peter,  wondering,  cried. 
'  To  Rome,'  said  Christ,  '  to  be  re-crucified.' 
Into  the  night  the  vision  ebbed  like  breath. 
And  Peter  turned  and  rushed  on  to  Rome  and  death." 

Why  is  that  legend  so  significant!  Because 
it  tells  you  why  Christ  is  unavoidable  in  human 
life.  He  is  so  much  part  of  human  life  that  life 
is  being  constantly  judged  and  measured  by  His 
example  and  His  spirit.  Peter  sees  the  heroism 
of  Jesus  and  he  cannot  be  a  coward ;  and,  in  the 
same  way,  this  great  and  wonderful  thing  was 
to  happen  in  the  world,  that  millions  of  men 
were  to  make  the  thought  of  Christ,  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  the  temper  of  Christ,  the  tribunal  of 
their  own  judgment.    And  so  in  the  Apostolic 


THE  UNAVOIDABLE  CHRIST      103 

writings  this  note  is  struck  continually.  Men 
are  told  to  forgive  each  other.  Why?  Because 
God  for  Christ's  sake  forgave  them.  Masters 
are  told  to  be  kind  to  their  servants.  Why? 
Because  they  have  a  Master  in  heaven.  Ser- 
vants are  told  to  be  obedient  to  their  masters. 
Why?  Because  there  was  One  who  took  upon 
Himself  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  became 
obedient  unto  death.  And,  as  the  shadows  of 
persecution  gather,  the  cry  rings  out,  like  a 
great  trumpet,  ^'  Confess  the  truth,  remember- 
ing Him  who  confessed  before  Pontius  Pilate. 
Suffer  the  death,  remembering  Him  who  suf- 
fered and  died,  that  you  may  reign  with  Him." 
Christ  has  so  entered  into  the  human  life  that 
you  cannot  live  without  the  thought  of  Christ. 
Consciously  or  unconsciously  Christ  is  with  us 
always,  and  our  life  is  constantly  overshadowed 
with  His  gracious  personality. 

From  time  to  time  there  are  certain  books 
published  which  picture  human  events  as  they 
might  be  if  Christ  returned  again.  There  was, 
for  example,  Mr.  Stead's  book  a  few  years  ago, 
entitled,  ^^  If  Christ  came  to  Chicago.''  If 
Christ  came  to  Chicago?  There  is  no  ^^  if," 
there  is  no''  if. ' '  The  very  title  of  such  a  book 
appears  to  me  to  be  a  kind  of  faithlessness  or 
falseness,  for  Christ  has  never  gone  away. 
Christ  has  seen  every  stone  of  Chicago,  every 
stone  of  Brooklyn,  of  New  York,  of  London, 


104       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

laid.  He  has  heard  every  cry  of  the  eternal 
beast  that  lurks  beneath  the  polished  surfaces  of 
your  modern  society.  He  has  witnessed  every 
vote  given  for  unjust  laws  and  has  moved 
through  every  crowd,  maddened  by  injustice  or 
intoxicated  with  brutal  pride — 

*'  Every  cruel  thought  and  plan 
Of  the  cruel  heart  of  man 
Tho'  but  whispered  He  can  hear." 

Sometimes,  of  late,  during  those  tumultuous 
periods  through  which  my  own  nation  has 
passed,  it  has  happened  to  me  to  walk  through 
Trafalgar  Square  in  London  and  to  look  up  at 
the  great  grey  figure  of  Nelson  above  the  roar 
of  the  vast  multitude  below,  and  I  have  thought, 
as  I  passed  the  base  of  the  pillar  and  have 
looked  upward  to  that  heroic  statue, ' '  Surely  if 
ever  this  people  forgets  the  voice  of  country  and 
forgets  the  love  of  duty,  that  voice  will  speak 
with  its  message  of  duty  and  heroism. '^  There 
is  a  true  sense  in  which  Nelson,  standing  high 
above  the  yellow  fogs  of  London  and  its  toiling 
millions,  is  still  speaking.  Ah,  there  is  an  in- 
finitely truer  sense  in  which  Jesus  stands  in  the 
very  central  roar  of  our  great  cities,  no  dead 
effigy,  no  figure  of  stone,  but  the  living  Christ, 
to  rebuke  and  to  uplift  us.  Know  that  He  is 
here,  know  that  He  is  unavoidable.  He  is  part 
of  the  air  we  breathe,  of  the  life  we  live,  of  the 


THE  UNAVOIDABLE  CHRIST      105 

very  atmosphere  in  which  our  thought  pulsates. 
Whether  we  admit  it  or  not,  we  live  in  Christ's 
America,  in  Christ's  England,  and  there  is  not 
a  drop  of  blood  in  our  veins  that  is  not  coloured 
with  the  blood  of  Christ ;  there  is  not  a  throb  of 
thought  in  our  brain  that  is  not  thrilling  with 
the  impact  of  that  life  of  lives,  which  moves 
through  all  men  and  lives  through  all  time. 

The  unavoidable  Christ.  ''  Well,"  I  think  I 
can  hear  some  one  say,  *'  no  doubt  there  is  a 
transcendental  sense  in  which  that  is  all  true, 
but  here  am  I,  living  a  young  man's  life  in  a 
great  crowded  city — what  have  you  to  say  to 
me?  "  And  here  is  some  one  else  who  says: 
^*  No  doubt  what  you  say  is  historically  true. 
I  am  not  so  unintelligent  as  not  to  be  aware  of 
the  fact  that  the  Galilean  has  conquered  and 
that  His  story  has  taken  possession  of  the  minds 
and  imaginations  and  literature  and  schools  and 
temples  of  the  world,  but  what  has  that  to  do 
with  me!  "  And  yet  another  says :  ^^  I  am  a  very 
sinful  creature.  I  have  gone  down  the  ladder, 
rung  by  rung.  I  am  lost  to  truth  and  honour, 
and  if  I  could  tell  you  just  who  I  am  and  the 
things  I  have  done,  and  all  the  leprous  spots 
that  are  upon  my  memory  and  conscience,  you 
would  turn  your  back  on  me.  What  is  the  use 
of  talking  to  me  about  the  unavoidable  Christ  ? ' ' 
And  so  I  might  go  on  trying  to  read  the  silent 
histories  in  your  faces;  but,  notwithstanding. 


106        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

whoever  you  may  be,  though  I  do  not  know  what 
your  history  is,  this  I  do  know,  this  I  affirm,  this 
I  am  certain  of :  the  unavoidable  Christ  is  yours. 
You  cannot  escape  Him. 

For  instance,  Jesus  is  with  you,  my  brother, 
the  moment  you  begin  to  think  about  yourself. 
You  cannot  prevent  Him  being  with  you.  What 
is  the  oldest  question  of  the  world!  The 
oldest  question  of  the  world  is,  ^^  Who  am  I, 
what  am  I,  whither  am  I  moving  1  ' '  Every  man 
has  asked  himself  that  question,  and  when  you 
go  home  to-night  you  will  shut  the  door,  and  in 
the  silence  of  the  night  that  question  will  come 
back  to  you,  * '  Who  am  I,  what  am  I,  whither  am 
I  travelling?  "  And  you  will  reply:  ''  Well,  at 
least  I  know  what  I  seem  to  be.  I  seem  to  be  a 
kind  of  animal  with  just  enough  of  something 
different  in  my  nature  to  make  me  conscious  of 
my  animalism  and  to  be  dissatisfied  with  it.  I 
am  a  little  dust.  Presently  the  dust  will  be 
blown  by  the  winds  of  fate  far  and  wide,  and  I 
suppose  that  will  be  the  end  of  me. ' '  No  sooner 
have  you  said  that  than  through  the  closed 
door  a  Presence  has  entered;  Jesus  has  taken 
up  the  problem.  He  says :  ^  ^  No,  you  are  a  child 
of  God ;  you  may  be  perfect,  even  as  the  Father 
in  heaven  is  perfect.  You  are  a  living  soul. 
You  are  greater  than  all  the  mass  of  physical 
matter;  than  the  earth,  with  all  its  cities,  and 
the  sky  with  all  its  rushing  worlds,  because  you 


THE  UNAVOIDABLE  CHRIST      107 

will  endure  when  these  have  passed  away  '^; 
and  you  cannot  ignore  that  voice.  You  may  not 
believe  it,  but  you  cannot  ignore  it.  Wlienever 
a  man  sits  down  to  think  about  himself,  what  is 
he  and  what  may  be  his  destiny,  Christ  comes  to 
him,  and  the  great  commanding  voice  of  the 
Divine  Teacher  asserts  itself. 

Christ  is  with  you  the  moment  you  begin  to 
think  about  your  conduct.  To-morrow  you  will 
go  down  into  the  thick  of  business.  You  will 
enter  your  office  or  your  warehouse  and  you  will 
close  the  door.  You  will  say,  ^'  Here  at  least  I 
am  safe  from  the  impertinent  interruption  of 
babblers  on  religion.  I  was  a  fool  to  go  to 
Plymouth  Church  last  night.  But  now  I  am  my 
own  man  again,  and  I  have  shut  the  door,  and  I 
can  do  as  I  like  with  my  own.  If  I  like  to  cheat, 
this  is  my  affair.  If  I  can  drive  a  hard  bargain, 
who  is  to  hinder  me  ?  If  I  like  to  be  unjust  and 
rapacious  and  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor  and 
snatch  at  every  mean  advantage,  who  is  to 
know?  ' ^  Even  as  you  speak  the  air  of  the  office 
quivers  and  vibrates  with  a  Presence.  Jesus 
comes,  ^'  the  door  being  shut."  He  makes  you 
think  of  a  very  different  standard  of  conduct 
which  He  Himself  practised  and  taught  to  mil- 
lions. He  makes  you  aware  of  another  and 
diviner  sort  of  life  which  has  been  lived  in  the 
world,  and  is  being  lived.  And  His  quiet  voice 
assails   the  ear  of  the   spirit — ''  Behold  this 


108       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

nobler,  greater,  more  sufficing  life — will  ye  also 
be  My  disciples!  " 

It  is  one  of  the  curses  of  modern  life  that  we 
are  growing  crazy  over  our  pleasures  and  indif- 
ferent to  our  duties,  and  there  are  some  of  you 
whose  pleasures  are  shameful  and  secret.  They 
are  pleasures  behind  closed  doors.  You  shut 
the  door  and  say,  *^  Here  no  eye  will  see  me. 
The  darkness  shall  cover  me,  and  in  the  grey  of 
the  morning  light  I  will  rise  and  steal  away 
— who  will  know!"  And  even  as  you  speak, 
the  Christ,  who  went  into  the  darkest  pit  of  the 
world  to  succour  and  find  His  lost  sheep,  is  glid- 
ing into  that  room,  and  He  turns  your  pleasure 
into  a  deadly  horror  with  His  glance.  He  has 
made  you  understand  that  a  man  has  no  right  to 
any  pleasure  that  is  purchased  by  another's 
wrong;  nor  to  any  gain  that  is  purchased  by 
another's  loss;  nor  to  any  wealth  that  is  pur- 
chased by  another's  poverty.  ' '  Whatsoever  ye 
would  men  should  do  unto  you,  do  ye  even  so 
unto  them. ' '  And  you  cannot  avoid  that  voice, 
because  it  is  the  Master  Voice  of  the  world, 
speaking  the  world's  master  truth.  If  barbar- 
ities have  ceased,  if  a  social  conscience  has  been 
created,  if  duty  to  humanity  has  been  recog- 
nised, if  you  yourself,  sitting  in  that  gallery 
to-night,  with  a  good  coat  on  your  back,  are  not 
a  slave  with  the  bloody  lash  cutting  into  your 
flesh,  wielded  by  the  hand  of  a  brutal  master,  I 


THE  UNAVOIDABLE  CHRIST      109 

tell  you  it  is  because  Christ  has  lived  and  died. 
All  the  justice  that  is  in  the  world,  all  the  com- 
passion, all  the  mercy,  has  all  come  from  the 
Man  of  Nazareth.  You  cannot  avoid  that 
Christ.  You  are  living  in  Christ's  America  and 
in  Christ's  Brooklyn,  and  you  are  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Christ  now. 

And  so  I  put  one;,  only  one,  question  to  you  as 
I  close.  The  unavoidable  Christ,  why  do  you 
want  to  avoid  Him?  Are  you  ashamed  of  Him? 
Are  you  ashamed  of  being  a  Christian?  Why, 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  very  greatest  thing  a 
man  can  be  in  this  world  is  to  be  a  Christian. 
Dr.  Hillis  mentioned  Henry  Drummond  to- 
night. I  knew  him;  I  loved  him;  I  honoured 
him;  but  I  never  honoured  and  wondered  at 
Drummond  so  much  as  in  the  close  of  his  life. 
Here  was  a  man,  in  the  pink  of  manly  health 
and  strength,  suddenly  touched  with  a  mysteri- 
ous finger,  dying  month  by  month,  slowly,  ter- 
ribly, in  torture.  During  all  that  crucifixion 
Henry  Drummond  went  through  he  never  lost 
his  temper,  never  lost  his  cheerfulness.  He 
kept  his  good  stories  for  his  friends.  They 
went  to  comfort  him,  he  comforted  them.  I  tell 
you  there  has  been  nothing  on  the  battlefield,  no 
heroism  connected  with  war,  so  marvellous  as 
the  heroism  you  behold  in  the  dying  of  Henry 
Drummond,  and  all  that  Drummond  was  he 
owed  to  Jesus  Christ. 


110       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

Is  there  any  young  man  here  to-night  who, 
with  that  picture  of  Henry  Drummond  dying, 
through  months  of  martyrdom,  with  a  smile  on 
his  lips  and  love  in  his  heart,  does  not  covet  to 
be  such  another  as  he  ?  Why  then  do  you  want 
to  avoid  the  Christ  who  can  do  all  that  to  you? 
And  have  you  no  need  of  Christ?  I  think  we 
all  need  some  influence  and  some  impulse  out- 
side ourselves  to  keep  us  up  to  our  best  ideals. 
One  man  finds  an  impulse  in  books ;  another  in 
stimulating  friendship;  another  in  loyalty  to 
some  chivalrous  ideal  of  life ;  but  the  greatest  of 
all  impulses  that  can  uplift  the  life  is  the  sense 
of  comradeship  of  Jesus.  Oh!  think  of  what  it 
means,  to  know  that,  as  we  walk  about  this 
world,  there  is  One  beside  us  whom  we  cannot 
see,  but  whom  we  know;  whose  eyes  rest  upon 
us,  whose  heart  beats  towards  us,  whose  love  is 
ours! 

Young  men,  remember,  not  only  that  the  eyes 
of  Jesus  are  resting  on  you,  but  act  so  that  those 
eyes  may  smile  upon  you;  and  if  you  can  find 
me  a  better  impulse  to  high  things  than  that,  I 
do  not  know  it. 

Or  there  may  be  some  one  here  to-night  who 
says,  ^^  All  that  you  have  been  saying  seems  to 
me  ironically  inappropriate!  Ironically  inap- 
propriate because  you  do  not  know  the  kind  of 
dungeon  I  am  in.  No  Christ  can  ever  come 
through  the  shut  doors  of  the  place  of  shame 


THE  UNAVOIDABLE  CHRIST      111 

and  misery,  and  hideous  ruin,  to  which  I  have 
brought  myself. ' '  My  dear  brother,  my  sister, 
that  is  not  true.  I  have  been  in  many  dark 
places,  but  I  have  never  been  in  a  place  so  dark 
that  I  did  not  find  Christ  there.  On  the  last  day 
of  the  old  year,  a  year  ago,  I  went  down  to  a 
house  where  there  were  some  seventy  fallen 
women,  to  take  away  three  of  their  number  to  a 
new  life,  and,  as  I  left  that  house,  with  those 
three  poor  creatures,  the  other  inhabitants  of 
the  house  lined  up  the  passageway  and  prayed 
for  them  as  they  passed.  They  said  things  like 
this:  ''  Be  good.  Oh!  you  have  got  such  a 
chance !  We  wish  we  had  it.  Cannot  you  take 
us  away  too,  sir,  and  give  us  a  chance  1  ' '  And 
the  poor  souls  wished  me  ^^  A  Happy  New 
Year  "  as  I  went  out  into  the  dark  street.  Was 
not  Christ  there?  A  dark  place  and  the  doors 
were  shut,  yet  Christ  was  there.  There  is  no 
place  so  dark  but  that  Jesus  can  make  it  light ; 
and  so  let  me  finish  my  sermon  to-night  by  fin- 
ishing my  text:  '^  Then  came  Jesus,  the  doors 
being  shut,  and  stood  in  the  midst,  and  said, 
Peace  be  unto  you."  Peace  be  unto  you.  When 
Jesus  enters  your  life  and  mine,  there  is  ^*  the 
peace  of  God  which  passeth  understanding. ' ' 


THE  COURAGE  TO  FORGET 
{Plymouth  Church,  Monday,  November  14ih,) 

My  subject  is  *^  The  Courage  to  For- 
get/' and  the  passages  on  which  I 
shall  base  my  address  are  these : 
* '  Neither  do  I  condemn  thee :  go,  and  sin  no 
more  "  (John  viii.  11).  ''  This  one  thing  I  do, 
forgetting  those  things  that  are  behind  ''  (Phil, 
iii.  13). 

If  you  will  allow  these  passages  to  make  their 
proper  appeal  to  the  mind,  you  will  at  once 
recognise  that  there  is  something  very  startling 
in  them.  They  speak  of  sin  in  a  way  to  which 
we  are  not  accustomed.  They  present  us  with 
two  examples  of  sin  which  we  rightly  hold  to  be 
dreadful,  one  of  which  many  moral  men  would 
account  inexpiable.  Christ  is  brought  face  to 
face  with  a  life  stained  with  a  shame  that  seems 
indelible.  Human  law,  and  even  the  religious 
law  of  His  race,  demands  the  last  penalty. 
Jesus  inflicts  no  penalty.  He  is  true  to  His 
own  definition  of  His  mission,  that  He  has  come 
not  to  destroy  men's  lives  but  to  save  them. 

113 


THE  COURAGE  TO  FORGET       113 

The  thing  He  cares  for  is  not  the  punishment  of 
sin,  but  recovery  and  deliverance  from  sin. 
The  woman  is  to  have  a  new  chance,  because  she 
is  capable  of  a  new  chance.  Her  past  and  her 
present  are  not  the  chief  facts  about  her;  the 
chief  fact  is  her  future.  It  is  her  future  of 
which  Christ  thinks,  and  therefore  He  says, 
*  ^  Neither  do  I  condemn  thee :  go,  and  sin  no 
more." 

The  saying  of  St.  Paul  is  conceived  in  the 
same  spirit.  He  gives  himself  a  chance:  he 
deliberately  turns  his  back  upon  the  past,  and 
fixes  his  mind  upon  the  making  of  the  future. 
He  is  fully  aware  of  the  horror  of  his  jDast.  He 
is  a  man  stained  with  the  blood  of  the  martyrs. 
The  death  of  Stephen  is  a  crime  that  lies 
heavy  on  his  conscience.  There  are  men  and 
women  in  the  world  whom  he  has  wronged, 
and  wronged  irreparably.  No  perfection  and 
purity  of  life  which  he  may  attain  under  the 
eyes  of  these  Philippian  converts  can  destroy 
the  terrible  facts  of  his  earlier  life,  which  live 
in  the  memories  of  those  whom  he  unjustly 
persecuted  in  Judea.  Nevertheless,  he  is  re- 
solved not  to  think  of  the  past;  he  will  forget 
it.  He  will  treat  it  as  though  it  were  a  book 
closed  and  sealed,  nevermore  to  be  re-opened. 
The  questions  that  must  instantly  arise  in  our 
minds  are  these :  Has  a  man  a  right  to  do  this  ? 
Has  he  the  power  to  do  it?    How  are  we  to 


114       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

define  such  a  temper :  is  it  immoral,  or  is  it  the 
expression  of  a  new  morality? 

Let  us  first  of  all  take  account  of  certain  facts 
about  sin  which  we  all  admit. 

The  first  fact  is,  as  we  have  been  told  again 
and  again,  with  all  too  bitter  truth  and  insist- 
ence by  many  great  teachers,  that  there  is  no 
forgiveness  of  sins  in  Nature.  That  which  a 
man  sows,  he  also  reaps,  and  there  is  no  magic 
which  can  change  tares  into  wheat.  Con- 
sequence pursues  us  to  the  last  syllable  of  re- 
corded time.  It  is  no  arbitrary  law  which 
declares  that  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited 
upon  the  children  unto  the  third  and  fourth 
generation ;  it  is  a  law  written  in  our  own  mem- 
bers. We  can  as  little  escape  it  as  we  can 
escape  the  ineluctable  force  of  gravitation.  At 
this  moment  we  each  carry  our  ancestors  in  our 
blood,  and  deeds  of  pride  and  passion  done  a 
century  ago  have  still  a  potency  to  subdue  our 
will  and  shape  our  life.  How,  then,  can  we 
dissever  ourselves  from  the  past?  Nature  de- 
clares the  act  impossible. 

A  second  fact  is  that  in  our  own  conscious- 
ness there  is  no  past  for  sin.  There  may  be  a 
statute  of  limitations  for  social  offences :  there 
is  none  for  memory.  The  deed  of  folly  done 
in  the  early  heat  of  youth  is  as  fresh  and  vivid 
to  us  to-day  as  in  the  hour  when  we  committed 
it.    We  have  but  to  touch  a  secret  spring  in  the 


THE  COUEAGE  TO  FORGET   115 

chamber  of  the  mind,  and  our  old  offence  steps 
forth  to  meet  us,  claiming  indisputable  rights  in 
us.  It  was  a  striking  and  terrible  fancy  of  De 
Quincey's  that  the  books  which  will  be  opened 
at  the  day  of  judgment  are  simply  the  books  of 
memory,  on  whose  frail  palimpsest  are  written 
in  undying  ink  the  thoughts  and  actions  of  a 
lifetime.  The  record  which  condemns  us  is 
kept  by  no  recording  angel ;  our  own  hand  has 
written  it,  and  it  lies  concealed  and  safe  in  the 
secret  places  of  our  own  personality.  How 
true  the  thought  is  we  all  have  means  of  know- 
ing; for  who  cannot  at  will  unlock  his  past? 
Who  has  not  again  and  again  summoned  him- 
self to  his  own  assize?  Who  has  not  known 
what  it  means  for  a  curtain  to  be  rolled  up  in 
the  mind,  and  there,  as  upon  a  lighted  stage,  all 
the  sad  and  sordid  drama  of  the  past  has  been 
re-enacted  amid  the  wailing  music  of  an  infinite 
regret?  How,  then,  can  we  forget  the  past? 
How  can  we  talk  of  giving  ourselves  new 
chances  when  we  are  crushed  beneath  the 
weight  of  memory ;  or  think  of  the  Future,  when 
to  our  own  consciousness  Time  is  non-existent, 
our  life  being  one  eternal  Now  I 

Take  the  very  cases  put  before  you  in  these 
passages.  What  future  has  this  woman  apart 
from  her  disgraceful  past?  What  can  Paul  do 
that  will  indeed  dissociate  him  from  the  vi- 
olence and  evil  that  once  made  his  name  a  name 


116       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

of  terror  to  the  innocent  and  good?  Give  each 
not  a  mere  handful  of  years,  but  centuries  of 
life  if  you  will  or  can :  yet  their  life  lies  rooted 
in  the  past.  The  prodigal  may  come  home,  but 
he  brings  the  far  country  with  him.  Men  may 
learn  to  do  well,  but  it  will  not  annihilate  the 
fact  that  they  once  did  evil.  This  woman 
plucked  from  shame  may  walk  henceforth  in 
the  beautiful  ways  of  holiness ;  but  the  spectres 
of  her  past  will  be  present  with  her  in  her 
dreams.  All  of  which  is  true,  but  woe  unto  us 
if  it  be  the  whole  truth.  For  consider  what  it 
implies ;  it  shuts  up  the  whole  race  in  despair. 
It  makes  virtue  impossible,  except  to  those  who, 
by  some  strange  kindness  of  heredity  and  pro- 
tected innocence,  have  escaped  the  evil  of  the 
world.  And  that  were  unjust.  We  deserve  a 
new  chance,  because  we  are  capable  of  a  new 
chance.  That  is  the  ground  which  Christ  takes, 
natural  law  notwithstanding.  The  kind  of 
justice  which  would  brand  this  woman  for  ever 
with  the  crime  of  a  moment  is  not  justice;  a 
world  governed  thus  would  be  a  world  of 
despair,  a  hell  from  which  God  Himself  could 
devise  no  rescue.  Therefore  when  Christ  for- 
gives this  woman  He  is  declaring  a  new  mo- 
rality, the  morality  of  that  new  chance  which 
every  human  creature  deserves  as  long  as  he  is 
capable  of  it.  The  forgiveness  of  sin  is  not  an 
act  of  grace  only,  it  is  an  act  of  justice :  and  so  it 


THE  COURAGE  TO  FOEGET       117 

is  plainly  stated  in  that  great  saying  of  St. 
John,  that  if  we  confess  our  sins  God  is  not  only 
faithful  but  just  in  forgiving  us  our  sins. 
Nature  may  be  unjust  to  us;  men  may  be  un- 
just; we  may  be  unjust  to  ourselves;  but  God 
will  be  just:  and  His  justice  displays  itself  in 
admitting  the  right  of  every  human  creature  to 
a  new  chance  as  long  as  he  is  capable  of 
using  it. 

Such  a  doctrine  of  Sin  and  Forgiveness 
comes  as  a  welcome  breath  of  hope  to  the 
broken  heart  of  man;  but  for  the  very  reason 
that  we  welcome  it  we  should  be  at  pains  to 
understand  it.  It  may  be  easily  misunder- 
stood, and  is  constantly  misinterpreted  as  an 
indication  of  a  sort  of  vague  amiability  in 
Christ.  To  the  man  who  can  read  the  Gos- 
pels without  perceiving  something  more  than 
amiability  in  Christ  I  have  nothing  to  say. 
Christ  did  not  dispense  pardon  wholesale,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  weak  person  who  feels  no 
resentment  of  wrong,  and  forgives  wrong  to 
escape  the  pain  of  punishing  it.  He  gave  a 
chance  to  those  capable  of  a  chance — to  no 
others.  We  have  therefore  to  ask  another 
question:  What  sort  of  sinner  is  he  who  is 
capable  of  a  chance?  Let  me  try  to  an- 
swer that  question  by  drawing  a  distinction 
between  what  I  may  call  irresolute  and  reso- 
lute sin. 


118       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

There  is  a  kind  of  sin  in  which  irresolution 
is  so  deeply  mixed  that  it  is  incapable  of  a  new 
chance.  *  ^  Acts  may  be  forgiven,  but  even  God 
Himself  cannot  forgive  the  hanger-back,''  is  a 
saying  as  true  as  it  is  brilliant.  It  is  the  irreso- 
lute act,  either  of  good  or  evil,  that  does  the 
worst  damage  to  the  moral  nature.  Thus,  in 
speaking  of  Robert  Burns,  Stevenson  declares 
that  it  was  this  element  of  irresolution  in  the 
man  that  made  his  case  hopeless.  **  If  he  had 
been  strong  enough  to  refrain,  or  bad  enough 
to'persevere  in  evil ;  if  he  had  only  not  been  Don 
Juan  at  all,  or  been  Don  Juan  altogether,  there 
"had  been  some  possible  road  for  him  through- 
out this  troublesome  world;  but  a  man,  alas! 
who  is  equally  at  the  call  of  his  worse  and  best 
instincts,  stands  amid  changing  events  without 
foundation  or  resource."  It  is  in  the  same 
spirit  that  he  speaks  of  Bums  as  grovelling  in 
''  unmanly  penitence  "  before  God  at  the  first 
touch  of  sickness,  and  says  that  there  are  no 
tears  so  little  worthy  of  respect  as  the  tears  of 
drunkenness.  Try  to  grasp  what  is  meant  by 
these  significant  words,  for  they  go  to  the  root 
of  the  pathology  of  sin.  They  describe  the  man 
whose  sin  is  not  manly,  and  whose  penitence  is 
not  manly  either;  to  whom  you  cannot  say, 
^^  Go,  sin  no  more,"  for  the  advice  will  be  in 
vain.  Forgiven,  he  will  abuse  forgiveness  by 
new  downfall,  and  treated  with  all  the  grace  of 


THE  COURAGE  TO  FORGET   119 

pity,  he  will  misuse  grace  so  that  his  sin  the 
more  abounds.  His  sin  is  not  a  clean  wound, 
but  a  disease.  It  is  not  some  barbarous  mis- 
handling in  a  lost  battle,  it  is  a  rottenness  of  the 
bones.  It  is  not  the  gust  of  passion  which  takes 
a  Peter  off  his  feet,  but  the  slow,  deliberate 
sinking  of  a  Judas  Iscariot  into  the  mire  of 
dissimulation.  To  such  a  sinner  God  offers  the 
chance  in  vain ;  he  cannot  profit  by  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  kind  of  sin 
which  may  be  called  Resolute.  Folly,  pride, 
perversity,  may  all  be  present  in  it,  but  there  is 
no  hanging  back.  The  nature  of  such  a  man  is 
of  that  order  ^^  which  moveth  altogether,  if  it 
move  at  all.''  A  Judas  calculates  his  advan- 
tage to  the  last;  a  Peter  flings  his  whole  life 
upon  the  hazard.  Saul  of  Tarsus  may  take  a 
wrong  course,  but  he  takes  it  in  a  great  way, 
with  a  kind  of  misguided  heroism.  Or  to  take 
more  modern  illustrations,  a  youth  of  strong 
passions  flings  his  life  away  as  the  prodigal  son 
did,  overwhelmed  for  a  time  by  the  unleashed 
turbulence  of  his  own  nature.  But  at  all  events 
he  is  resolute  in  his  follies.  What  is  the  saving 
factor  in  such  a  youth!  It  is  this  very  manli- 
ness of  nature.  He  sins  like  a  man,  not  like  a 
sneak.  He  takes  the  punishment  that  falls  to 
him  and  does  not  cry  out  against  it.  He  sins 
like  a  man ;  he  repents  also  like  a  man,  not  com- 
plaining of  his  hunger  but  of  his  unworthiness ; 


120       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

**  I  am  not  worthy  to  be  called  thy  son."  And 
that  is  the  case  of  the  clean  wound,  not  of  the 
disease.  It  will  heal,  because  the  nature  is  still 
healthy.  For  him  there  is  another  chance  be- 
cause he  is  capable  of  it.  To  him  Christ  may 
say,  '^  Go,  and  sin  no  more,"  for  as  he  has 
sinned  with  his  strength  so  he  will  cleave  to 
righteousness  with  his  strength  too.  And  for 
him  it  is  but  a  just  thing  that  he  should  get  his 
chance;  and  precisely  because  he  is  capable  of 
learning  the  lessons  of  the  past,  he  may  be  en- 
couraged to  forget  the  past,  and  find  that 

' '  The  strongest  plume  in  wisdom's  pinion 
Is  the  memory  of  past  folly." 

That  brings  us  to  the  most  difficult  matter  in 
the  whole  problem.  We  feel  it  is  just  that  we 
should  have  a  new  chance;  but  the  question 
remains,  how  are  we  to  regard  past  sin?  The 
answer  is  that  we  should  forget  it,  a  truly 
astonishing  answer.  It  might  easily  be  inter- 
preted as  implying  mere  callousness.  Men  are 
only  too  ready  to  forget  their  sins,  and  to  as- 
sume that  all  the  consequences  of  these  sins  are 
annihilated  by  lapse  of  time,  or  by  the  act  of 
penitence.  We  must  take  the  risk  of  such  an 
inference.  The  thing  to  be  remembered  is,  that 
this  is  Christ's  answer,  and  for  those  who  can 
accept  it  in  the  spirit  in  which  Christ  utters  it, 
it  is  the  very  essence  of  all  His  Gospel.    The 


THE  COURAGE  TO  FORGET   121 

misapplication  of  a  medicine  does  not  destroy 
the  essential  value  of  the  medicine.  The 
greatest  truths  are  always  the  truths  that  lie 
nearest  to  error.  There  is  no  more  dangerous 
doctrine  than  the  grace  of  God,  as  Paul  knew 
very  well,  when  he  said  that  some  men  sinned 
that  grace  might  abound;  but  he,  nevertheless, 
preached  that  doctrine  as  the  one  message  for 
humanity.  There  could  be  no  more  dangerous 
thing  from  the  point  of  view  of  social  law  than 
for  Christ  to  let  this  woman  pass  out  of  sight 
unpunished;  yet  Christ  did  it,  because  He 
wished  to  vindicate  the  higher  spiritual  law  of 
the  new  chance.  Can  we  vindicate  this  doctrine 
of  forgetting  the  past!  Dare  I  take  the  risk 
involved  in  such  a  truth,  and  say  boldly  to  the 
man  who  comes  to  me  with  some  terrible  con- 
fession of  misconduct,  "  This  is  God's  will 
concerning  you,  that  you  should  regard  the  past 
as  a  closed  book,  and  go  and  sin  no  more  "?  I 
cannot  help  myself:  I  must  take  that  risk,  I 
must  give  this  counsel,  not  only  because  it  is 
Christ's  counsel,  but  because  I  feel  in  my  own 
heart  that  it  is  the  only  manly  way  of  regarding 
past  sin. 

How  can  I  justify  the  counsel,  then!  I 
justify  it  as  a  counsel  of  moral  sanity.  It  is 
not  good  for  us  to  brood  over  our  past  sin;  we 
know  to  what  a  prison-house  of  despair  and 
madness  such  brooding  led  so  gentle  and  so 


122       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

pure  a  spirit  as  Cowper's.  To  think  much  of 
disease  is  to  produce  disease.  The  remorse 
that  is  for  ever  reliving  the  past  is  an  unclean 
passion.  Nothing  is  so  morally  debilitating  as 
the  habit  of  calling  up  before  the  imagination 
the  lurid  phantoms  of  old  sins.  This  is  the 
worst  evil  of  auricular  confession;  it  sets  men 
and  women  searching  for  sin,  prying  into  the 
secrecies  of  sin,  vivisecting  the  diseased  moral 
tissue,  and  the  result  is  the  sapping  of  charac- 
ter, the  diminution  of  strength  to  resist  evil,  the 
pollution  of  the  imagination.  Therefore  it  is 
simply  a  counsel  of  moral  sanity  to  say,  Cut 
yourself  free,  as  far  as  you  may,  from  the  very 
memory  of  sin.  When  the  curtain  lifts  in  the 
brain,  and  the  old  drama  begins  to  move  again, 
avert  your  eyes,  turn  the  lights  out.  ^^  Never 
allow  your  mind  to  dwell  on  your  own  miscon- 
duct. The  conscience  has  morbid  sensibilities; 
it  must  be  employed,  but  not  indulged.''  The 
thing  that  the  sick  man  has  to  do  is  to  get  back 
to  health  as  soon  as  he  can;  and  the  quickest 
way  is  to  forget  that  he  has  been  sick.  And  so 
that  same  wise  counsellor,  Eobert  Louis  Steven- 
son, whom  I  have  already  quoted,  says  in  one  of 
his  prayers,  ''  Help  us  with  the  grace  of  cour- 
age, that  we  be  none  of  us  cast  down  when  we 
sit  lamenting  amid  the  ruins  of  our  happiness 
or  our  integrity;  touch  us  with  the  fire  of  Thy 
altar,  that  we  may  be  up  and  doing  to  rebuild 


THE  COURAGE  TO  FORGET   123 

our  city.''  The  grace  of  courage — in  nothing 
do  we  need  it  so  much  as  in  our  attitude  to  past 
sin,  for  the  courage  to  forget  our  sins  is  the 
essential  preliminary  to  the  yet  more  difficult 
courage  of  atoning  for  them. 

It  is  not  only  a  counsel  of  moral  sanity  thus 
to  forget,  but  it  is  an  act  of  faith.  We  are  told 
that  God  forgets;  that  He  casts  our  sins  be- 
hind His  back,  to  be  remembered  no  more 
against  us  for  ever ;  and  it  is  an  act  of  unf aith 
to  go  on  remembering  what  God  has  forgotten. 
Forgiveness,  if  it  mean  anything  at  all,  must 
be  final  and  complete.  The  forgiven  man  is  put 
back  by  the  act  of  forgiveness  into  the  place  he 
occupied  before  he  sinned.  Morally  that  is  im- 
possible, spiritually  it  is  possible.  My  child 
would  think  ill  of  me,  and  know  my  forgiveness 
but  a  form  of  words,  if  I  kept  a  clouded  coun- 
tenance toward  him  after  I  forgave  him.  I 
turn  to  him  a  bright,  encouraging  countenance, 
and  thus  I  encourage  him  to  imagine  himself  as 
standing  where  he  stood  before  he  sinned.  God 
does  the  same  by  us.  Christ  says  plainly, 
**  Neither  do  I  condemn  thee."  When  He 
meets  Peter  once  more  after  his  great  apostasy. 
He  never  so  much  as  names  it;  He  treats  it  as 
forgotten,  in  order  that  Peter  may  forget  it. 
The  man  who  goes  on  confessing  sin  which  he 
believes  is  forgiven  is  insulting  the  sincerity  of 
God  in  every  word  he  utters,  and  under  the  in- 


124       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

fluence  of  a  false  humility  is  simply  gratifying 
a  morbid  sensitiveness  of  soul.  Surely  the 
manlier  and  better  way  is  to  accept  forgiveness 
with  no  false  scruples;  and  there  is  no  better 
way  of  showing  our  faith  in  God  than  to  have 
the  courage  to  forget  the  sin  which  He  for- 
gives. 

And  the  courage  of  forgetfulness  is  not  only 
an  act  of  faith,  it  is  the  one  source  of  moral 
progress.  We  must  be  perpetually  cutting  our- 
selves free  from  the  past,  if  we  are  to  push  on 
to  a  larger  and  better  future.  The  artist  for- 
gets his  early  failures,  the  author  his  first 
grotesque  experiments  in  literature,  and  the 
saint  his  first  stumbling  steps,  for  the  same 
reason,  a  reason  which  is  imperative,  that  no 
progress  is  possible  to  a  mind  clogged  by  the 
weight  of  past  errors.  And  herein  lies  the 
final  justification  of  Christ's  doctrine;  we  are 
allowed  to  forget  only  on  condition  that  we 
aspire.  Paul  forgets  the  past  only  because, 
and  as  long  as,  he  is  pressing  to  the  mark  of 
his  high  calling  in  Christ  Jesus.  The  sinful 
woman  is  not  condemned  because  she  sins  no 
more.  The  one  anodyne  of  past  sin  is  the  con- 
stant exertion  of  the  soul  intent  upon  the 
struggle  of  virtue.  Kelax  that  struggle,  and  all 
the  past  will  rush  back  upon  you  like  a  deso- 
lating blackness.  Consecrate  yourself  to  that 
struggle,  and  God  will  permit  you  to  forget  the 


THE  COURAGE  TO  FORGET       125 

past ;  nay,  in  the  very  act  of  struggling  you  will 
forget  it. 

Perhaps  some  of  you  will  say:  ^*  But  what 
about  the  secret  and  unpublished  sins,  which 
are  all  the  more  dreadful  to  remember,  because 
they  have  not  been  openly  punished?  ''  You 
must  let  God  deal  with  these  in  His  own  way; 
if  He  choose  to  keep  your  sin  secret,  let  His 
tender  grace  to  you  be  a  new  incentive  to  a  pure 
and  humble  life.  Or  you  will  say :  ^ '  What  of  the 
kind  of  sin  that  has  wronged  another  more  than 
myself?  '^  There  is  but  one  answer  to  that 
question :  go  to  the  wronged  one,  and  make  what 
atonement  you  can.  You  can  never  make  a  full 
reparation:  make  what  you  can.  Something 
here  also  you  must  leave  to  God,  for  if  you 
could  deal  with  your  misconduct  without  God's 
help,  Christ  had  not  come  into  the  world  to  die 
for  you.  The  main  thing,  the  one  thing,  I  im- 
plore you  to  recollect  is,  that  there  is  pardon 
for  you,  even  you,  if  you  are  capable  of  taking 
it.  Christ  is  not  here  to  condemn  you — your 
conscience  has  done  that  already — He  is  here  to 
save  you.  Too  long  you  have  fed  upon  the 
husks ;  come  home.  Too  long  you  have  lashed 
yourself  with  vain  remorse.  Arise,  and  go  to 
your  Father.  Let  the  dead  past  bury  its  dead ; 
come  to  the  Redeemer  of  your  spirit,  and  him 
that  cometh.  He  will  in  nowise  cast  out.  God 
has  faith  in  you;  and  let  God's  faith  in  you  be- 


126       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

get  in  you  what  you  need  quite  as  much  as  pen- 
itence, if  you  are  to  use  your  new  chance,  faith 
in  yourself. 

^*  But,''  you  say,  ^'  thus  to  turn  from  sin 
needs  an  impulse.  What  can  give  me  an  im- 
pulse to  turn  away  from  sin?  "  Have  any  of 
you  read  the  sonnet  that  Rossetti  wrote  on 
**  The  woman  who  was  a  sinner  at  the  door  of 
Simon  the  Pharisee  "?  Or  have  you  seen  the 
picture  he  painted?  Here  is  the  picture:  a 
woman  passing  through  the  street  in  all  the 
gaiety,  the  untroubled  and  false  gaiety,  of  a 
beautiful  courtesan,  and  she  looks  and  sees  at  a 
window  the  face  of  Jesus.  And  the  moment  she 
sees  the  face  of  Jesus  her  life  is  scorched  into 
nothingness.  Her  soul  cries  out  within  her  in 
agony,  and  in  the  words  of  the  poem  she  ex- 
claims— 

"  O,  loose  me,  seest  thou  not  my  Bridegroom's  face 
That  draws  me  to  Him?    For  His  feet,  my  kiss, 
My  hair,  my  tears  He  craves  to-day:— and  oh ! 
What  words  can  tell  what  other  day  and  place 
Shall  see  me  clasp  those  blood-stained  feet  of  His? 
He  needs  me — calls  me — loves  me — let  me  go ! " 

There  was  the  impulse :  she  had  seen  Christ ; 
and  the  moment  she  saw  the  Master  she  wanted 
to  forget  the  past. 

**  There  is  life  for  a  look  at  the  crucified  One — 
There  is  life  at  this  moment  for  thee." 

And  so,  lastly,  the  great  source  of  impulse 


THE  COURAGE  TO  FORGET   127 

for  you  to  turn  from  your  sin,  my  brother,  is 
that  God  has  faith  in  you;  and  God's  faith  in 
you  should  beget  a  little  faith  in  yourself. 
There  is  nothing  that  heals  us  so  speedily  of  our 
self-despising  as  the  sense  that  some  one  has 
faith  in  us.  Oh,  think  of  it  and  look  at  it! 
This  woman,  in  her  shame,  had  not  a  friend  in 
the  world,  not  one  who  believed  in  her :  and  yet 
Jesus  had  faith  in  her.  Jesus  says  to  her, 
believing  in  her  capacity  of  complete  recovery, 
^ '  Go,  and  sin  no  more. ' '  And  if  Jesus,  looking 
at  that  creature  humbled  in  the  dust,  could 
believe  it  was  possible  for  her  to  sin  no  more, 
she  herself  might  surely  begin  to  have  faith  in 
herself. 

God's  faith  in  you,  Christ's  love  toward  you, 
Christ  even  now  saying  to  the  men  and  women 
here  most  conscious  of  sin :  ' '  You  can  be  clean ; 
you  may  be  clean;  you  can  even  now  begin  a 
new  life;  let  Me  come  into  your  life  to  help 
you  " — that  is  the  gospel.    Will  you  receive  it? 


VI 
THE  MINISTRY  OF  NIGHT 

{Tuesday  Evening,  November  15,  1904.) 

THE  subject  on  which  I  wish  to  speak  to 
you  to-night  I  have  called  ''  The 
Ministry  of  Night.''  The  text  is 
found  in  John  iii.  2  and  3 :  ^  *  The  same  came  to 
Jesus  by  night  (that  is,  Nicodemus),  and  said 
unto  Him,  Rabbi,  we  know  that  Thou  art  a 
teacher  come  from  God,  for  no  man  can  do 
these  miracles  that  Thou  doest  except  God  be 
with  him.  Jesus  answered  and  said  unto  him, 
Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you.  Except  a  man  be 
born  again  he  cannot  see  the  kingdom  of  God." 
Three  times  Nicodemus  is  mentioned  in  the 
Gospel  story.  Each  time  the  fact  is  mentioned 
that  he  came  to  Jesus  by  night.  Three  times 
he  emerges  into  history:  first  as  an  inquirer 
after  truth,  again  as  a  witness,  and  lastly  as  a 
disciple  of  Jesus  Christ.  On  each  occasion  the 
phrase  is  repeated :  ^  ^  He  who  came  to  Jesus  by 
night."  Why  is  it  that  this  peculiar  stress  is 
laid  upon  the  fact  that  Nicodemus  came  to 
Jesus  by  night?  I  think  it  is  because  John 
would  lay  emphasis  upon  the  fact  that  Nico- 

128 


THE  MINISTRY  OF  NIGHT        129 

demus  had  a  mind  that  was  dark  with  perplex- 
ity and  difficulty  on  the  great  problems  of  the 
soul  and  of  religion.  He  came  by  night  because 
there  was  something  in  the  dark  obscurity  of 
the  night  which  answered  to  the  condition  of  his 
own  soul.  With  some  of  us  it  is  only  when  the 
night  of  some  great  perplexity  or  grief  closes 
around  us  with  sombre  shadows ;  only  when  the 
immense  loneliness  of  the  night  presses  and 
forces  itself  down  upon  us  that  we  begin  to  get 
face  to  face  with  the  mystery  of  the  soul.  It 
was  so  with  Nicodemus.  He  had  come  to  feel 
the  dissatisfaction  and  the  loneliness  of  a  soul 
that  finds  the  mystery  everywhere  present  in 
life  too  great  for  it.  He  came  to  Jesus  by 
night,  and  the  night  was  in  his  own  soul. 

But  why  did  he  come  to  Jesus  about  his  diffi- 
culties ?  Because  he  had  watched  Jesus,  he  had 
heard  His  words,  and  he  had  perceived  that 
there  was  a  secret  about  Christ  that  he  desired 
to  understand.  I  remember  on  a  certain  day, 
some  months  ago,  two  things  happened.  I  read 
in  a  newspaper  a  little  story  about  one  of  the 
most  famous  and  brilliant  actresses  of  Europe, 
who,  when  she  was  congratulated  upon  her 
wealth  and  fame,  said :  ' '  All  that  is  nothing  to 
me ;  what  I  want  is  rest.  * '  And  later  in  the  day 
I  sat  by  the  bedside  of  a  poor  dying  seamstress, 
a  worn-out  child  who  had  toiled  with  her  needle 
to  keep  her  mother's  home  together,  and  she 


130       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

said:  '^  I  have  rest;  I  am  quite  happy."  And 
I  thought  if  I  could  only  bring  these  two  women 
together,  the  brilliant  actress  to  the  bedside  of 
the  poor  seamstress,  would  not  the  brilliant 
actress  have  said :  ^  ^  Here  is  that  which  I  have 
long  sought  in  vain.  It  is  worth  all  my  fame, 
all  my  wealth.     Tell  me  the  secret!  " 

My  friends,  there  is  a  secret  in  the  world,  the 
sublimest  of  all  secrets,  which  we  call  the  secret 
of  Jesus.  Eome  perceived  it  long  ago.  It  was 
not  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  that  con- 
quered Eome :  it  was  not  preaching  and  teach- 
ing from  house  to  house  that  stirred  the  echoes 
of  the  city  and  aroused  the  interest  of  the  peo- 
ple. Preaching  there  was,  but  there  was  some- 
thing more.  There  grew  up  in  the  great  pagan 
city  a  new  kind  of  men  and  women  with  calm 
upon  their  brows  and  tranquillity  in  their  eyes ; 
and  Eome,  tired  out  with  pleasure  and  lust, 
said:  "  These  people  have  a  secret;  what  is  it? 
"We  want  to  know  it."  And  through  the  ages 
that  secret  has  never  left  the  world.  Twelve 
centuries  later  there  arose  a  man  called  Francis 
of  Assisi,  humble  and  poor,  but  whose  face 
shone  with  the  peace  of  God.  The  greatest  in- 
tellects of  Europe  sought  the  door  of  Francis 
to  know  what  the  secret  was,  and  where  the 
peace  came  from.  That  was  what  Nicodemus 
did.  Here  was  one  who  went  up  and  down  the 
world  with  the  tranquillity  of  God,  clothing 


THE  MINISTKY  OF  NIGHT        131 

Him  like  a  garment.  And  Nicodemus,  walking 
in  the  darkness  of  Ms  great  perplexity,  said: 
**  Can  He  tell  me  what  the  secret  is?  I  also 
want  it."  That  was  why  he  came  to  Jesus  by 
night. 

The  first  thing  I  wish  you  to  notice,  then,  is 
that  this  is  not  an  old  and  obsolete  story ;  it  is  a 
new  and  living  story,  because  it  is  a  representa- 
tive story.  It  represents  two  things  common 
to  mankind  in  all  ages:  the  desire  to  discover 
the  best  kind  of  life  and  dissatisfaction  with  any 
kind  of  life  that  is  not  the  best.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  this  dissatisfaction  is  constant,  nor- 
mal, and  intense.  It  is  not  in  the  power  of 
human  nature  to  sustain  itself  continuously  at 
the  straining  point  of  agony  and  great  and 
painful  feeling.  We  have  opiates  for  our  pain, 
we  have  our  love  for  those  who  are  dependent 
upon  us,  we  have  our  pride  and  our  pleasure, 
we  have  the  absorbing  struggles  of  our  life,  we 
have  our  ambitions  and  books  and  music,  but 
they  are  only  opiates.  The  pain  is  there  still, 
a  hungry,  gnawing  pain,  which  wakes  ever  and 
again  into  violence,  a  worm  that  coils  around 
the  heart  and  feeds  upon  it,  and  from  time  to 
time  we  feel  the  cruel  tooth.  The  man  to  whom 
life  has  given  the  most  and  best  sometimes  has 
a  moment  when  he  feels  as  though  he  is  feeding 
upon  ashes.  The  man  who  builds  himself  the 
finest  house  has  a  moment  when  he  looks  upon- it 


132       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

with  cold  and  indifferent  eyes,  for  it  has  ceased 
to  charm  him.  The  man  who  has  climbed 
highest  in  the  social  scale  has  a  moment  when 
he  says:  ''Is  it  worth  while!  "  He  knows 
something  is  wanting.  He  gets  glimpses  of 
another  and  higher  kind  of  life  which  is  not  his. 
He  meets  people,  it  may  be  much  poorer,  and 
much  less  successful  than  himself,  and  yet  they 
seem  to  spread  peace,  purification,  and  perfume 
about  them  as  they  go.  He  says :  ' '  Oh,  that  I 
could  be  like  these!  Here  is  a  better  kind  of 
life,  and  I  have  not  lived  it. ' '  My  friends,  are 
these  things  true  of  us!  Have  we  had  these 
moments?  Nicodemus  had  had  them,  and,  ex- 
perienced ruler  and  teacher  as  he  was,  he  knew 
that  he  had  not  found  the  true  secret  of  the 
best  kind  of  life.  There  are  many  men  who  call 
themselves  Christians  of  whom  that  can  be  said. 
There  are  those  of  us  who  call  ourselves  good, 
and  are  believed  to  be  good,  and  yet  we  have  not 
found  the  ultimate  secret  of  the  perfect  peace 
that  is  in  Jesus.  If  we  are  honest  with  our- 
selves we  know  there  is  something  lacking. 
Here  is  a  ruler  and  a  teacher  in  Israel,  a  great, 
wise,  and  good  man,  and  he  says :  ' '  I  have  not 
got  what  I  want,''  and  he  went  to  Jesus  by 
night. 

Here  is  the  next  thing  I  want  you  to  notice : 
Nicodemus  did  something — he  went  to  Jesus. 
He  did  something  positive;  he  did  something 


THE  MINISTRY  OF  NIGHT        133 

that  cost  him  much.  Do  you  think  it  was  an 
easy  thing  for  this  proud  and  cultured  man, 
who  all  his  life  had  taught  other  people,  to  go  to 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  to  he  taught !  Oh,  I  think  I 
see  him  on  his  way  to  Jesus  that  night,  taking 
the  quietest  and  the  darkest  road  lest  he  should 
be  seen;  by  turns  hot  and  cold  as  he  thinks 
about  his  position ;  at  one  moment  burning  with 
eagerness  and  the  next  moment  ashamed  of  his 
errand.  There  he  goes,  down  the  dark  road, 
hoping  that  no  fellow-Pharisee  is  abroad  to 
scrutinise  or  question  him.  It  was  no  easy 
thing  for  a  man  of  his  habits  of  mind  and  social 
position  to  seek  Jesus:  it  cost  him  something. 
Be  sure  of  this,  then,  it  always  costs  us  some- 
thing to  come  to  Jesus.  It  is  not  an  easy  thing. 
And  in  spite  of  all  the  reverence  and  authority 
that  clothe  the  Christian  tradition  to-day  it  is 
still  difficult  to  come  to  Jesus.  What  can  Jesus 
teach  one  who  is  a  ruler  in  Israel?  Think  of 
all  that  stands  in  the  way  of  Nicodemus:  his 
pride  of  culture,  his  social  reputation,  the 
deadening  weight  of  convention,  those  notions 
about  religion  which  have  become  second  nature 
to  him,  and  his  natural  dislike  of  anything  like 
extravagance  or  enthusiasm.  It  needed  bold- 
ness for  such  a  man  to  take  the  path  that  led  to 
the  Galilean  that  night.  But  where  there  is  a 
real  misery  men  will  be  bold  in  seeking  relief 
from  misery.    The  man  whose  heart  is  really 


134       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

aching  for  peace  and  rest  will  not  stop  to  think 
about  what  others  think  of  him.  And  he  must 
do  something.  To  feel,  to  hope,  to  wish,  that 
will  not  help  him.  It  is  action  that  saves  us, 
and  so  Nicodemus,  laying  aside  every  weight, 
every  conventionality,  takes  the  dark  road  to 
the  door  of  the  humble  Galilean,  and  his  spirit, 
as  he  goes,  says:  '^  What  must  I  do  to  be 
saved?  "    He  came  to  Jesus. 

If  you  are  at  all  interested  in  any  of  these 
feelings  I  have  described,  I  think  your  whole 
soul  and  mind  will  now  be  straining  to  know 
what  it  was  that  Jesus  had  to  say  to  Nicodemus. 
Within  the  little  room  there  stands  the  old,  wise 
ruler  and  scholar,  face  to  face  with  the  young, 
unauthorised  teacher.  Nicodemus  can  hear  his 
own  heart  beat  as  he  enters  that  humble  room. 
His  quiet,  well-ordered  life  has  never  known  an 
adventure  like  this.  He  is  tempted  even  now  to 
turn  back.  It  seems  such  folly  to  suppose  that 
this  young,  unlettered  Galilean  can  teach  him 
anything.  He  feels  very  much  as  the  wise  and 
philosophic  people  of  Siena  felt  when  they  went 
to  hear  Catherine  preach.  How  should  the 
daughter  of  a  poor  tanner  have  anything  to  say 
to  them?  He  felt  as  the  great  people  of  the 
court  and  the  aristocracy  felt  when  they  went  to 
hear  Whitfield  preach.  How  should  a  poor 
Oxford  sizar  have  anything  to  say  to  them? 
He  felt  as  some  of  you  feel  perhaps — proud. 


THE  MINISTRY  OF  NIGHT        135 

curious,  coldly  critical  as  you  entered  this 
service  to-night.  What  did  he  expect  Christ  to 
say  to  him  I  I  suppose  that  he  expected  some 
philosophic  discourse  or  something  novel  in 
theology.  Religion  was  for  this  man,  remem- 
ber, in  the  main  a  matter  of  intellectual  curios- 
ity, and  the  most  that  he  expected  was  some  new 
putting  of  an  old  truth.  The  first  word  Jesus 
speaks  is  to  make  him  understand  that  religion 
is  not  a  part  of  a  life,  religion  is  the  whole  of 
life.  To  understand  it,  to  receive  it,  to  find  its 
divine  secret,  it  is  not  enough  that  you  should 
open  this  or  that  door  of  your  mind  or  your 
judgment.  Your  whole  mind  and  heart  and 
will  have  to  be  created  over  again.  ^^  Except 
a  man  be  born  again  he  cannot  see  the  kingdom 
of  God."  That  is  Christ's  word.  It  is  a  bigger 
thing  than  Nicodemus  imagined  to  be  a  Chris- 
tian. It  means  the  re-fusing  of  a  man's  entire 
nature,  so  that  it  may  be  said  that  he  is  born 
again,  and  is  a  new  creature.  And  when  Nico- 
demus heard  that,  he  marvelled  and  said: 
' '  How  can  these  things  be !  " 

Why  did  Nicodemus  marvel?  He  gives  his 
reason  quite  plainly.  He  says  that  such  a 
process  is  against  the  laws  of  nature.  ^'  How 
can  a  man  be  born  again  when  he  is  old?  "  In 
other  words,  how  can  a  man's  nature  be 
changed?  Think  of  it.  Here  are  you,  a  com- 
plex and  recognisable  creature,  who  for  ten, 


136       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

twenty,  thirty,  forty  years  have  lived  in  this 
world,  daily  building  up  for  yourself,  by 
hundreds  of  infinitesimal  acts,  a  personality. 
There  was  a  time  when  you  were  plastic  and 
impressionable.  There  was  a  time  when, 
chameleon-like,  you  took  your  colour  from  your 
environment.  That  time  has  passed  long  ago; 
your  habits  and  principles  are  fixed ;  your  views 
of  life,  your  way  of  looking  at  things,  your  very 
speech  and  manner  are  fixed.  Your  friends, 
and  those  who  know  you  best,  know  these 
definite  characteristics  of  your  personality. 
They  know  that  beneath  the  outward  suavity  of 
manners  there  is  impenetrable  habit,  just  as 
under  the  soft  loam  there  sometimes  runs  a 
ridge  of  rock  that  will  turn  the  edge  of  the 
sharpest  weapon,  and  you  are  accustomed  by 
this  time  to  justify  yourself  upon  these 
grounds.  You  say:  ''  I  am  what  I  am,  and  I 
cannot  help  it ;  my  habits  are  fixed,  my  thoughts 
are  fixed,  my  personality  is  no  longer  plastic. 
How  can  a  man  be  born  again  when  he  is  old*?  " 
Let  me  translate  this  statement  into  spiritual 
language.  Here  is  a  story  I  remember  reading 
many  years  ago  in  the  notebook  of  one  of  our 
novelists.  It  runs  in  this  way:  the  story  is 
about  a  man  who  was  held  fast  in  the  grip  of 
drunkenness,  but  by  power  of  will  broke  his 
vice  and  for  twenty  years  kept  from  the  drink, 
and  then,  when  his  wife  died  and  the  world 


THE  MINISTEY  OF  NIGHT        137 

seemed  empty  to  him,  he  did  not  think  the  strug- 
gle worth  keeping  up  and  sank  back  again 
*^  and/'  says  the  writer  who  tells  the  story, 
* '  nature,  whether  human  or  otherwise,  was  not 
made  to  be  reformed.  You  can  develop,  you  can 
check,  you  cannot  alter  it. ' '  Why,  even  Luther, 
in  one  of  his  despondent  moments,  said :  '  ^  You 
must  take  men  as  they  are;  you  cannot  change 
their  natures. '^  And,  as  I  said  last  night,  if 
that  be  true,  there  is  no  hope  for  any  one  of  us. 
There  advances  toward  us  out  of  the  terrible 
shadows  that  gather  around  the  closing  of  our 
life  the  awful  spectres  who  say  to  us : '  ^  Despair 
and  die."  Is  it  true!  Christ  says  it  is  not 
true.  He  came  '  ^  to  seek  and  to  save  the  lost  ' ' ; 
He  came  to  change  the  very  natures  which  seem 
to  be  unchangeable.  ^'  You  must  be  born 
again,"  says  Christ.  You  must  because  you 
can.  Yea,  though  a  man  be  old,  old  in  habits, 
old  in  sin,  he  can  be  born  again.  That  is  the 
answer  Christ  gives  to  Nicodemus,  and  He 
says:  ''  Marvel  not,"  and  then  proceeds  to  put 
three  points  to  His  astonished  listener. 

First  of  all,  to  the  question  of  Nicodemus, 
''How  can  these  things  be?"  Christ  replies 
thus :  It  is  an  intelligible  process,  and  therefore 
it  should  be  clear  and  acceptable  to  an  intel- 
ligent man.  ''  Art  thou  a  ruler  in  Israel  and 
hast  never  seen  anything  that  answers  to  a  new 
birth?  "    What  Christ  referred  to,  I  think,,  was 


138       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

this :  there  were  in  Jerusalem  pagans  who  from 
time  to  time  became  converts  to  the  Jewish 
faith.  Picture  the  pagan  as  he  comes  to  Jeru- 
salem, knowing  only  a  barbarous  faith.  Grad- 
ually the  old  mythologies,  on  which  his  mind 
has  been  nurtured,  become  unthinkable.  There 
expands  before  him,  like  a  fan  of  light,  the  truth 
about  God  taught  by  Moses  and  the  prophets. 
After  many  ceremonies  he  becomes  a  convert 
to  Judaism  and  is  admitted  to  the  full  priv- 
ileges of  the  Jewish  faith.  Jesus  says  to  Nico- 
demus :  *  ^  Have  you  seen  that,  and  yet  when  the 
new  birth  is  spoken  of  are  you  incredulous  ?  ' ' 

If  Jesus  were  speaking  to  us  to-night  He 
might  make  His  appeal  on  the  same  grounds. 
He  might  ask  us  if  we  have  never  seen  changes 
in  men  so  vital  and  so  far-reaching  that  they 
might  be  called  new  births  1  Are  not  men  truly 
born  again  in  intellect  by  the  reception  of  new 
truths,  and  in  spirit  by  the  entrance  of  a  great 
love,  and  in  conduct  by  the  perception  of  new 
ideals?  There  is  no  reason  for  incredulity — it 
is  God's  way  with  man,  and  has  always  been  so. 
It  is  an  intelligible  process,  and  therefore 
should  not  be  ridiculed  by  any  person  of  intel- 
ligence.    '^  Marvel  not,"  says  Christ. 

And  then  Christ  puts  a  second  point.  He 
says,  jn  the  second  place,  not  only  ^^  you  can  " 
but  *^  you  must  '^  be  born  again.  Note  the 
words.      Christ  says  plainly  that  without  re- 


THE  MINISTEY  OF  NIGHT        139 

birth,  you  cannot  even  see  the  kingdom  of  God. 
You  remember  the  story  about  Turner — how 
some  one  said :  '  ^  Mr.  Turner,  I  never  saw  such 
sunsets  as  you  paint,"  and  he  replied:  ''  Don't 
you  wish  you  could  see  them?  "  What  he 
meant  is  quite  clear.  It  is  that  there  is  a  sight 
of  the  soul  as  well  as  a  vision  of  the  eye,  and  it 
requires  more  than  the  physical  eye  to  see  the 
glory  Turner  saw  in  evening  skies.  There  is 
also  needed  in  us  a  power  of  spiritual  vision  if 
we  are  to  see  Christ.  As  you  came  to  this 
church  to-night  and  looked  up  as  you  drew  near, 
what  did  you  see?  Just  a  mass  of  looming 
walls,  and  a  light  here  and  there ;  and  if  you  had 
stayed  outside,  how  much  would  you  have 
known  of  what  the  church  is  I  Would  you  have 
guessed  anything  about  the  waves  of  feeling 
ebbing  and  flowing  and  beating  from  wall  to 
wall!  Would  3^ou  have  guessed  anything  about 
the  sacred  and  accumulated  memories  which  to 
me  seem  to  be  real  and  vital  forces  at  this 
moment?  Would  you  have  known  anything 
about  the  sacred  songs  and  prayer?  You  must 
come  inside  the  church  to  see  what  the  church 
is.  And  Jesus  says :  ^  *  I  am  the  door.  If  any 
man  will  enter  in,  he  shall  be  saved. ' '  No  won- 
der you  say  to  Christian  people :  "  I  cannot  see 
what  you  see."  It  is  because  the  soul  has  not 
been  recreated.  You  will  never  see  the  sunset 
on  the  Cross  where  your  Maker  died,  Aor  the 


140       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

sunrise  on  the  sepulchre  whence  He  rose  for 
your  justification,  till  you  get  the  new  Divine 
sense  created  in  you  by  which  these  things  are 
seen.  You  must  be  born  again.  You  cannot 
even  see  the  kingdom  of  God  until  you  are  bom 
again. 

And  then  Christ  puts  the  third  point,  which 
is  the  most  difficult.  He  says :  '  *  This  is  a 
spiritual  process.''  There  I  can  fancy  some  of 
you  parting  company  with  me  at  once.  You 
follow  me  when  I  speak  of  the  intellectual  possi- 
bilities of  new  birth,  but  now,  when  I  come  to 
the  spiritual  process,  you  say,  "  Here  you  use 
terms  which  I  reject.  I  know  nothing  about 
spiritual  processes."  Give  me  one  moment's 
tolerance — let  me  tell  you,  what  I  mean  by  a 
spiritual  process.  I  call  that  process  spiritual 
which  lies  behind  matter,  and  is  not  explained 
by  matter.  Here  is  a  man  who  the  other  day 
was  overtaken  with  a  great  and  awful  terror 
thinking  of  a  friend  he  had  not  thought  of  for 
twenty  years,  and  he  could  not  explain  it.  At 
that  very  moment  that  friend  was  being  tor- 
tured to  death  by  cannibals.  You  believe  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  telepathy.  You  believe  that 
some  strange  wave  of  sympathy,  or  personality, 
travelled  over  the  world,  vibrating  between  the 
hearts  of  these  two  separated  friends.  You 
say : ' '  That  is  intelligible.  I  have  heard  things 
like  that  myself."    Yet  you  won't  believe  that 


THE  MINISTRY  OF  NIGHT        141 

in  your  own  heart,  and  in  all  human  hearts,  God 
has  fashioned  an  apparatus  to  receive  the  mes- 
sage of  His  love  and  His  power.  Listen  to  the 
words  of  Jesus:  ^'  The  wind  bloweth  where  it 
listeth,  and  thou  hearest  the  sound  thereof,  but 
canst  not  tell  whence  it  comes  or  whither  it 
goes.  So  is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the 
Spirit. '  *  Out  of  the  far  eternities  God  comes  to 
you  like  a  wind;  God's  mystic  telepathy  reaches 
you ;  and*  you  have  felt  this,  and  some  of  you 
feel  it  now.  ^'  Marvel  not  that  ye  must  be 
born  again.'' 

*^  Ah!  "  you  say,  *^  but  these  are  theories; 
we  have  heard  them  before.  Can  you  give  us 
instances  1  Can  you  give  us  practical  proofs  I  ' ' 
Why,  the  world  is  full  of  them.  Look  at  that 
man  bowing  on  Pilate's  staircase  at  Rome  and 
behold  him  tremble  with  a  sudden  joy,  as 
though  an  angel  spake :  ^  ^  The  just  shall  live  by 
faith  " — and  Martin  Luther  gets  up,  and  the 
Reformation  was  beg-un!  Was  not  that  new 
birth?  Look  at  that  poor  unhappy  wanderer 
with  a  sad,  broken  heart  going  up  and  down 
through  the  wet  Elstowe  meadows,  dreaming 
of  hell,  frightened  in  every  fibre  of  him  and  hor- 
rified at  the  vision  of  his  sin ;  and  then,  one  day 
he  hears  two  old  women,  sitting  in  the  sun,  talk- 
ing of  the  love  of  Christ,  and  the  great  heart  of 
John  Bunyan  opens  into  a  miraculous  flower 
of  faith  and  poetry!    Is  not  that  new  .birth? 


142       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

Have  you  any  better  phrase  for  it?  ^'  Can  a 
man  be  born  again  when  he  is  old  ?  ' '  Look  at 
John  Wesley.  At  forty  years  of  age  he  is 
hardened  into  a  hide-bound  formalist.  Our 
ways  after  forty  years  are  tolerably  fixed,  and 
yet  the  hour  comes  when  this  precise  and  nar- 
row ritualist  bows  in  the  meeting-house,  on  the 
site  of  which  I  have  often  preached,  and  while 
a  simple  Moravian  speaks  of  the  love  of  God  the 
heart  of  Wesley  melts,  and  he  says :  ^  ^  I  believe 
that  God  did  for  Christ's  sake  forgive  my  sins, 
even  mine."  Was  not  that  a  new  birth?  Or, 
take  a  more  recent  story.  You  remember  what 
Stanley,  the  great  traveller,  said  about  himself. 
In  substance  he  said  that  when  he  went  to 
Africa  to  find  Livingstone,  he  was  the  biggest 
atheist  in  London.  He  found  Livingstone,  and 
behind  Livingstone  he  found  Christ.  For  he 
said  that  as  he  stood  day  by  day  beside  Living- 
stone in  the  Dark  Continent  and  saw  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  man,  the  love  of  the  man,  and 
how  he  lived  up  to  the  things  he  professed,  he 
asked  himself,  *^  Is  he  crazy?  what's  the  matter 
with  him?  "  Until  finally,  through  Living- 
stone, something  of  Christ  came  into  the  heart 
of  Stanley,  and  he  says :  ^ '  Livingstone  con- 
verted me,  but  he  never  meant  to."  A  few 
months  ago  this  man,  who  once  described  him- 
self as  ^^  the  biggest  atheist  in  London,"  dies, 
saying  to  his  broken-hearted  wife :  *  ^  Do  not 


THE  MINISTRY  OF  NIGHT        143 

weep;  we  shall  meet  again."  That  from  the 
man  who  was  ^  ^  the  biggest  atheist  in  London '  ^ ! 
Is  not  that  new  birth?  Have  you  any  better 
phrase  for  it  than  the  one  that  Christ  has 
given? 

And  now,  think  of  what  it  means  to  be  ^  *  born 
again."  It  means  getting  back  to  your  child- 
hood. Who  has  not  cried,  ^^  Oh,  that  I  were  a 
child  again!  If  only  I  could  start  life  over 
again,  free  from  all  the  errors  and  disasters, 
free  from  all  the  stains  and  soils  of  the  past!  " 
You  may,  you  can.  You  can  get  back  to  child- 
hood again.  For  Naaman  there  was  the  river 
that  washed  away  the  leprosy  of  the  flesh;  for 
you  ^  ^  there  is  a  fountain  opened  in  the  house  of 
David  for  sin  and  uncleanness,"  where  the  soul 
may  be  washed  clean.  To  get  back  to  child- 
hood, to  get  the  weight  of  sin  removed,  to  start 
anew — Jesus  says  you  can.  Science  tells  us 
that  all  that  is  wanted  to  create  a  new  star  is  a 
start.  There  is  the  vast  floating  nebulae.  If 
it  will  only  cohere  at  some  little  point,  then  the 
globe  will  begin  to  form,  and  presently  you  will 
have  a  star.  All  that  you  want  is  the  point  of 
contact,  the  cohering  point;  then  the  new  life 
will  begin  to  stir  in  you^  and  the  new  soul  begin 
to  grow  into  the  starry  image  of  Christ. 

And  now,  may  Christ  Himself  teach  you  and 
me  what  these  things  mean,  for  no  one  knows 
better  than  I  do  how  difficult  it  is  to  speak  of 


144       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

them,  and  no  one  here  can  tell  me  so  plainly  as 
I  shall  tell  myself  when  I  leave  this  pulpit  to- 
night, how  badly  and  imperfectly  I  have  spoken 
of  them.  But  my  hope  is  that  Jesus  is  now 
going  to  finish  the  sermon,  for  He  had  a  won- 
derful way  of  making  people  understand  what 
the  new  birth  meant  without  even  mentioning  it. 
The  young  ruler  did  not  understand  anything 
about  the  new  birth  until  Jesus  said:  ^'  Sell  all 
that  thou  hast  and  give  to  the  poor.''  He 
understood  then  that  there  was  something  that 
he  had  not  got.  And  the  woman  of  Samaria 
did  not  understand  anything  about  it  until 
Jesus  said:  ^^  Go,  fetch  thy  husband."  Then 
she  knew.  And  Simon  Peter  did  not  know 
what  spirit  he  was  of  until  Jesus  looked  on  him, 
and  then  his  heart  melted  within  him.  And  so 
it  may  be  that  there  is  here  to-night  a  young 
ruler,  a  graduate  of  a  university,  full  of  good 
feelings,  but  you  want  something  you  have  not 
got.  **  You  must  be  born  again.''  Or  there 
may  be  a  woman  here  who  knows  not  how  great 
her  sin  is  because  she  is  used  to  it.  ^ '  You  must 
be  born  again."  Or  there  may  be  a  man 
whose  life  is  a  ghastly  tragedy,  for  whom  some 
single  act  of  evil  seems  to  mark  the  grave  of 
hope  and  effort,  and  Christ  says :  ^  *  You  may  be 
born  again."  And  His  promise  is  that,  as 
many  as  receive  Him,  to  them  shall  He  give 
power  to  become  the  sons  of  God,  even  to  those 


THE  MINISTRY  OF  NIGHT        145 

who  believe  on  His  name,  whicli  are  bom,  not  of 
the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God. 

You  can — you  must — you  may. 

And  you  may  refuse.  Nicodemus  came  by 
night — and  through  the  night  he  found  his  way 
to  Christ.  There  was  another  man  of  whom  it 
was  said,  *^  He  went  out  immediately,  and  it 
was  night.''  Are  you  going  through  the  night 
to  Jesus — or  into  the  night  with  Judas?  The 
dawn  met  the  eyes  of  Nicodemus  as  that  inter- 
view with  Christ  concluded.  But  to  Judas 
there  was  no  dawn — for  in  going  from  Christ  he 
left  all  light  behind  him. 

Through  the  night  to  Jesus — into  the  night 
with  your  own  tortured  and  tormented  self — 
ah,  which?  For  it  is  always  dark  where  Christ 
is  not — it  is  always  daybreak  in  the  soul  when 
Jesus  enters  it. 


VII 

GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER 

{Plymouth  Church,  Wednesday,  November  lUh.) 

TO-NIGHT  my  subject  is  "  God  Wait- 
ing Man's  Answer/'  and  the  passage 
upon  which  my  address  is  based  is 
found  in  2  Sam.  xxiv.  13 : '  ^  Now  advise,  and  see 
what  answer  I  shall  return  to  him  that  sent 
me."  It  is  so  that  the  prophet  speaks  ever- 
more to  the  souls  of  men.  The  prophet  is  the 
bearer  of  messages  from  the  Eternal,  messages 
which  demand  an  answer.  The  prophet  is  not 
necessarily  a  human  creature  speaking  with 
the  human  voice.  The  prophet  is  sometimes 
represented  by  a  moment,  by  some  solemn  hour 
of  life  when  the  soul  is  stirred  beyond  its  wont 
and  the  vision  of  things  eternal  is  unrolled.  Or 
the  prophet  may  be  represented  by  an  emotion 
— some  call  to  the  heart,  some  clear  voice  that 
speaks  within  us,  rebuking  us  for  our  folly, 
speaking,  it  may  be,  through  the  lips  of  our  pain 
and  the  anguish  of  our  regret,  a  very  soul- 
piercing  voice  which,  waking  or  sleeping,  we 
cannot  escape.  Or  the  prophet  may  be  rep- 
resented for  us  by  a  cause,  some  struggle  for 

146 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER    147 

righteousness,  in  which  we  are  called  to  take 
our  part,  some  great  divisive  truth  which  parts 
men  on  the  right  hand  and  the  left,  demanding 
from  us  allegiance  or  refusal.  Or  the  prophet 
may  be  life  itself,  a  vague  and  awful  figure  ris- 
ing out  of  the  wrecks  of  time,  a  ghost  treading 
amidst  the  dust  of  empire,  mocking  us  with  the 
folly  of  our  ambitions  and  with  the  brevity  of 
all  human  joys  and  triumphs  and  successes. 
But  the  prophet,  in  whatever  g-uise  he  may 
come,  is  always  with  us.  No  man  goes  through 
life  without  hearing  the  prophetic  voice.  Out 
of  eternity  God  leans  toward  us,  speaking  to  us 
through  various  events  and  through  various 
men.  The  holy  messages  of  truth  and  right- 
eousness pursue  us,  find  us  out,  assail  and  im- 
portune us,  and  to  those  messages  we  have  to 
give  a  reply:  ^'  Advise,  and  see  what  answer  I 
shall  return  to  him  that  sent  me.'' 

Think,  then,  first  of  all,  what  this  statement 
really  implies.  It  implies  this :  that  man  is  the 
centre  of  a  great  web  and  network  of  Divine 
influence.  Spiritual  forces  play  upon  him, 
moulding  and  communicating  with  him.  There 
are  two  aspects  in  which  we  see  man.  We  see 
him  as  a  creature  of  time,  content  with  his  lot, 
and  we  see  him,  on  the  other  hand,  as  a  child  of 
eternity  imprisoned  in  time.  Which  of  these 
two  descriptions  of  man  is  the  true  description? 
I  think  if  we  reflect  for  a  moment  we  shall  all 


148       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

of  us  see  that  the  second  description  is  the  true 
one.  Human  life  rests  upon  a  spiritual  base. 
Man  is  universally  conscious  of  some  Divine 
power  interested  in  his  little  life,  touching  it  at 
various  points,  interfering  with  it,  agitating  it ; 
and  this  sense  of  God,  sometimes  a  vague 
dread,  sometimes  a  living  rapture,  throbs 
through  every  fibre  of  human  nature.  It  is  the 
root  of  all  religions.  There  is  something  in 
man  which  prevents  us  from  accepting  human 
life  in  mere  animal  contentment,  and  when  we 
do  so  we  know  we  are  committing  an  outrage 
upon  ourselves.  You  may  say  that  these  senti- 
ments are  not  sentiments  that  have  always 
existed  in  the  world.  Some  one  here  may  re- 
mind me  of  all  that  has  been  written  about  the 
old  Greeks  and  their  joy  in  the  common  day  and 
their  freedom  from  those  sombre  shadows  of 
destiny  that  overcloud  the  modern  world.  One 
of  our  essayists  has  even  gone  so  far  as  to  say 
that  when  the  old  Greeks  chose,  instead  of  the 
sun-girt  Apollo,  the  crucified  Nazarene,  they 
made  a  mistake  which  was  fatal  to  the  happi- 
ness of  Europe.  An  irresponsible  essayist  may 
say  that,  and  a  writer  of  fiction  may  say  that, 
but  your  truly  cultured  thinker  will  not  say  it. 
Your  own  Professor  James,  in  his  Gilford 
Lectures,  has  said  something  quite  different. 
He  has  pointed  out  that  what  was  called  the 
joyousness  of  the  Greek  and  his  contentment 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER    149 

with  the  common  day  only  existed  by  his  faculty 
of  forgetting  the  mystery  of  life  and  death. 
And  Dean  Stanley  has  somewhere  pointed  out 
that  he  cannot  recollect  in  Greek  poetry  the 
emblem  of  the  setting  sun.  The  Greek  turned 
his  face  deliberately  away  from  all  that 
savoured  of  the  sombre  and  the  sad,  and  yet 
the  shadow  came  and  eternity  cast  its  pure 
white  light,  its  searching  beam,  its  alarming 
splendour,  down  into  the  depths  of  the  Greek 
heart,  as  it  does  into  the  depths  of  every  heart. 

My  brethren,  let  us  take  this  fact  that  life 
rests  upon  a  spiritual  base  for  granted  before 
anything  else  is  said  to-night.  The  true  defini- 
tion of  man  I  offer  you  is  this :  man  is  ^ '  an 
animal  by  accident,  but  a  spirit  by  birthright  '' ; 
and  hence  we  know  that  there  are  such  things 
as  the  messages  of  God;  and  hence  we  are 
aware,  not  always  clearly,  sometimes  with  great 
vagueness,  sometimes  with  long  interruptions — 
yet  we  are  aware  in  the  intense  moments  of  our 
life  that  round  about  us  there  is  a  great  spir- 
itual world  pulsating.  We  are  watched,  we  are 
known,  we  are  waited  for  in  a  world  that  is  out 
of  sight. 

This  story  from  which  my  text  is  taken  serves 
to  point  the  lesson.  Let  us  look  at  it  for  a 
moment.  Here  is  a  king  of  a  small  people,  one 
of  the  smallest  and  most  insignificant  kingdoms 
in  the  world,  who  commits  a  certain  sin  in 


150       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

numbering  the  people.  It  is  an  act  which  most 
men  would  not  reckon  a  sin  at  all.  It  appears  to 
be  nothing  worse  than  an  error  of  judgment  or 
a  blunder  in  political  policy.  In  the  history  of 
the  ages  it  is  an  infinitesimal  event.  The  great 
kingdoms  of  the  world  were  not  affected  by  it. 
It  is  no  crime  that  shakes  the  stars,  no  blind 
brutality  that  stains  the  earth  with  blood;  it  is 
no  atrocity  which  seems  worthy  of  all  those 
magnificent  and  fearful  retributions  which 
happen  to  men  and  nations  when  the  cup  of 
their  iniquity  is  full.  Yet  what  happens  I  God 
instantly  interferes.  The  prophet  is  knocking 
at  the  door  of  David  in  the  very  moment  when 
his  sin  completes  itself.  He  has  touched  God's 
judgment-seat  unawares;  he  has  set  in  motion 
spiritual  forces  which  instantly  declare  them- 
selves. And,  my  brethren,  it  is  true  about  our- 
selves as  well  as  about  David,  and  it  is  true 
about  our  least  sin.  Ah,  there  are  many  of  you 
who  are  ready  to  console  yourselves  in  your  sin- 
ning upon  the  ground  of  your  own  insignif- 
icance. You  say:  '^  Is  it  credible  that  God 
should  take  any  account  of  the  small  matters  of 
my  life,  the  petty  wrongs  I  may  commit,  the  evil 
thought  that  may  pass  through  my  mind?  It  is 
beneath  the  dignity  of  God  to  care  about  me  and 
about  such  things  as  these.''  But  God  does 
care,  because  you  are  His  child,  and  God  does 
know. 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER     151 

Therefore  this  text  is  for  us.  The  prophet 
found  the  door  of  the  king;  he  will  find  your 
door  too,  however  hidden  or  humble  or  ohscure 
it  is.  There  he  knocks  and  makes  his  stem  de- 
mand, *^  Advise  now  what  answer  I  shall  re- 
turn to  him  who  sent  me. ' ' 

What,  then,  is  the  nature  of  this  message? 
Who  are  these  prophets  that  come  to  all  of  us, 
knocking  at  the  chamber-door  and  demanding  a 
reply?  The  first  prophet  is  life  itself — life  with 
eyes  that  see  all  mysteries,  whose  robe  is  time, 
whose  feet  are  silent  with  the  dust  of  many 
graves.  Shortly  before  Shelley  died  he  had  a 
curious  dream,  in  which  he  saw  his  spectral 
self  coming  toward  his  conscious  self,  and  the 
spectral  self  suddenly  lifted  the 'hood  from  the 
brow  and  spake  to  the  conscious  self,  saying: 
*'  Art  thou  satisfied?  Art  thou  satisfied?  '' 
That  vision  comes  to  us  all,  the  cowled  figure 
of  our  own  life.  It  comes  holding  in  its  hands 
the  long  diary  of  our  existence.  It  turns  the 
pages  back  to  the  chapter  of  childhood  and  says, 
^^  Look,"  and  as  we  look  how  many  of  us  have 
to  say — 

*'  It  gives  me  little  joy- 
To  know  I'm  farther  off  from  heaven 
Than  when  Twas  a  boy." 

It  turns  back  the  pages  of  youth,  written  with 
many  an  episode  of  pride  and  folly.  It  turns 
back  the  pages  of  manhood,  stained  with  many; 


152       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

a  story  of  corrupt  pleasures  and  sordid  joys. 
It  turns  back  the  page  of  the  older  years,  in 
which  nothing  is  written,  it  may  be,  but  the 
ledger  account  of  your  business  gains  and 
losses,  and  it  says:  *' Are  you  satisfied?'* 
And,  oh,  there  are  pages  that  are  blank,  and 
they  also  are  terrible — page  after  page  with 
nothing  written,  as  though  we  had  not  lived,  as 
though  our  heart  were  dead,  as  though  we  slept 
while  the  great  battle  of  truth  and  righteous- 
ness and  progress  and  knowledge  went  on 
around  us,  and  as  we  read  in  the  book  we  begin 
to  see  that  it  tells  a  story.  It  records  a  drama. 
It  is  not  a  collection  of  disconnected  fragments. 
Cause  and  effect  are  here,  act  and  consequence. 
We  begin  to  see  the  links  and  sequences  in  the 
long  chain  of  action.  We  see  how  character 
has  been  forged,  how  habits  have  been  riveted 
upon  us,  how  the  yesterdays  are  the  parents  of 
to-day.  We  see  how  some  pollution  of  the  soul, 
which  dates  back,  it  may  be,  to  the  schoolday 
time,  has  left  a  stain  which  has  spread  itself 
through  our  whole  nature.  We  see  how  pride 
has  misled  us  and  how  pleasure  has  corrupted 
us ;  how  we  have  disappointed  our  own  dreams 
of  excellence;  how  we  have  missed  the  shining 
stepping-stones  and  upward  mounting  stairs 
that  led  to  God,  and  a  voice  speaks : ' '  Art  thou 
satisfied?  '*  And  then  we  begin  to  see,  if  we 
have  grace  given  to  us  to  see  it,  that  this  busi- 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER     153 

ness  of  living  is  a  tremendous  business.    Oh! 
it  is  an  awful  thing  to  live.    It  is  no 

"  Life  of  nothings,  nothing  worth 
From  that  first  nothing  ere  our  birth 
To  that  last  nothing  under  earth." 

We  are  fashioning  a  destiny.  To  have  lived 
carelessly  were  a  crime ;  to  live  wickedly  is  in- 
sanity. Once,  once  only,  it  is  given  to  us  to  live 
upon  this  earth,  and  oh,  awful  thought!  from 
these  earthly  days  of  ours,  from  these  careless 
acts,  we  are  building  up  an  illimitable  future. 
Life  knocks  at  your  door  and  asks :  ^  *  Art  thou 
satisfied?  '^  What  answer  do  you  give  the 
prophet  ? 

It  seems  to  me  that  one  of  the  greatest  perils 
of  this  generation  is  its  almost  total  lack  of 
meditation.  '^  My  people  do  not  consider, '^ 
said  the  old  Hebrew  prophet.  There  are  many 
men  who  do  not  know  themselves,  and  res- 
olutely take  every  opportunity  they  can  to  for- 
bid self-knowledge.  A  young  doctor,  in  speak- 
ing to  me  once  of  the  days  of  his  early  practice, 
when,  by  a  very  slight  modification  of  principle 
and  honour,  he  might  have  easily  made  a  rapid 
position  for  himself  but  did  not,  said:  ''  You 
see,  sir,  I  could  not  do  it ;  I  had  to  live  with  my- 
self.'' That  was  a  fine  answer.  Here  was  a 
man  who  knew  what  self-scrutiny  was.  Here 
was  a  man  who  looked  forward  and  measured 


154       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

what  the  future  meant,  and  he  could  not  live 
with  a  dishonoured  self.  But  with  many  men 
to-day  there  is  no  onward-looking  thought. 
They  do  not  use  those  means  of  thought  which 
lie  in  the  very  nature  of  our  common  life. 
They  are  counted  of  no  value.  And  hence,  just 
because  you  do  not  sit  down  and  think  about 
yourself,  you  know  not  what  kind  of  man  you 
are,  and  there  comes  a  miscalculation  which 
runs  through  all  your  life  and  is  going  to  work 
its  ruin. 

We  have  all  read  the  parable  of  Jesus  in 
which  He  tells  us  of  the  man  who  had  many 
barns  and  built  greater,  and  said  to  his  soul, 
^ '  Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up  for  many 
years ;  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry. ' '  The  proper 
title  for  that  parable  is,  ^*  The  Story  of  the 
Man  who  Miscalculated. ' '  The  most  wonderful 
thing  in  the  story  is  its  entire  sobriety  of  state- 
ment, its  convincing  lucidity,  its  plain  justice. 
The  man  is  not  a  bad  man.  There  is  no  sugges- 
tion that  he  made  his  money  by  dishonest  or  dis- 
honourable means.  He  is  a  good  man,  accord- 
ing to  the  common  ethics  of  things.  What  is 
wrong,  then  I  Simply  that  he  is  making  the 
fatal  experiment  of  living  without  a  soul.  That 
is  the  awful  accusation  Christ  brings  against 
him ;  and  it  is  an  accusation  which  comes  home 
with  marked  emphasis  against  multitudes  of 
men  in  this  age  of  ours. 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER     155 

Will  you  consider  a  moment  and  tell  me 
whether  this  city — every  city — is  not  full  of 
men  and  women  who  are  making  the  fatal  ex- 
periment of  living  without  a  soul?  If  I  take 
the  matter  into  the  area  of  national  events  you 
will  at  once  recognise  what  the  statement 
means.  When  your  great  emancipation  dec- 
laration was  published,  what  was  it  that  James 
Eussell  Lowell  wrote! — 

*'  For  it  was  felt  from  pole  to  pole, 
Without  a  need  o'  proclamation ; 
Earth's  biggest  country's  got  her  soul 
And  risen  up  Earth's  Greatest  Nation." 

And  what  did  he  mean!  He  meant  that  the 
country  had  done  and  dared  something  for 
righteousness.  It  had  sacrificed  for  a  cause. 
It  had  put  the  crown  of  fire  upon  its  own  brow 
and  driven  the  spear  of  crucifixion  into  its  own 
side  rather  than  let  the  ease  of  falsehood  and 
corruption  destroy  the  people.  The  nation  got 
its  soul  by  sacrificing  its  barns.  America  is 
not  going  to  live  without  a  soul.  You  are  not 
going  to  do  or  be  anything  in  the  world,  either 
as  a  nation  or  individually,  without  a  soul. 
You  miscalculate  if  you  suppose  you  can.  For 
the  hour  comes  when  that  Prophet  of  Retribu- 
tion, whose  face  is  darkness  and  whose  lips  are 
doom,  will  come  to  you  in  your  false  prosperity 
and  say : '  *  This  night  thy  soul  shall  be  required 


156       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

of  thee.    Where  is  the  soul  for  which  Christ 
died?  '' 

My  brethren,  I  beg  you,  first  of  all,  to  face 
boldly  the  question  with  which  I  started — * '  Are 
you  satisfied  with  your  own  life!  "  And  you 
must  take  account,  in  answering  that  question, 
not  only  of  the  things  done  but  of  the  things 
undone.  Think  of  what  a  human  life  may  be 
and  measure  its  splendour  by  the  splendour 
of  others  who  have  lived  well.  Oh,  frivolous 
woman,  living  only  for  dress  and  pleasure  and 
display,  look  at  Catherine  of  Siena;  look  at 
what  womanhood  has  been  when  sanctified  by 
the  Cross.  Can  you  dare  to  go  on  living  only 
this  empty  life  of  pleasure  when  you  too  might 
be  a  woman  like  that?  Is  there  a  youth  here 
living  only  for  dollars ;  living  only  for  success, 
hoping,  some  day  or  other,  to  arrive  at  that 
perilous  eminence  where  the  millionaire  enjoys 
his  doubtful  pleasures  ?  Come  and  look  upon  a 
man  I  once  knew.  Simple  youth  that  he  was, 
he  was  so  foolish  as  to  think  that  the  world 
could  be  converted,  and  so  heroic  as  to  think 
that  God  wanted  him  to  do  something  in  con- 
verting it.  He  went  to  Africa,  and  was  there  a 
year  only  when  he  died,  and  as  he  lay  dying  he 
said  to  his  friend :  ^ '  You  are  going  back  to  Man- 
chester, I  hope.  When  you  get  there  go  to  my 
old  Sunday  school ;  go  to  the  girl  I  was  to  have 
married ;  tell  her  and  tell  them  all  that  my  last 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER     157 

words  as  I  lay  dying  in  Africa  were,  ^  Let  a 
thousand  die,  but  never  give  up  Africa/  '^  I 
would  rather  be  that  young  man  dying  there  in 
Africa  than  be  the  master  of  millions  of  dollars. 
So  would  you  if  you  would  think  of  it  for  a 
moment.  Are  you  satisfied,  then,  with  your 
life?  That  is  the  first  great  question  that 
comes  home  to  you  to-night. 

And  then,  when  this  prophet  of  life  has  put 
his  question,  there  is  another  prophet  who 
enters  silently  into  the  heart  and  begins  to  ac- 
cuse us  of  our  sins — the  prophet  of  our  Con- 
science; and  in  his  hand  are  the  seven  rays  of 
light,  and  his  countenance  is  as  a  flame  of  fire, 
and  it  is  his  work  to  illumine  our  hearts,  that 
we  may  know  what  manner  of  men  and  women 
we  are.  Turn  your  eyes  for  a  moment  to 
another  scene  in  the  history  of  David,  when 
another  prophet  called  Nathan  enters  the 
palace  and  begins  to  tell  his  terrible  and  dra- 
matic story  about  the  ewe  lamb.  You  all  know 
the  story.  The  most  terrible  thing  in  the  tale 
of  David's  sin  is  this:  David  did  not  seem  to 
know  that  he  had  sinned.  He  ate  and  drank 
and  went  about  his  business  and  retained  cor- 
rect and  just  sentiments  about  the  sins  of  other 
people,  but  not  once  did  he  see  that  there  was  no 
worse  criminal  walking  the  earth  than  himself. 
He  listens  to  Nathan's  story  with  sincere  indig- 
nation.   He  acts  in  the  spirit  of  Shakespeare's 


158       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

famous  phrase,  ^^  Let  tlie  galled  jade  wince,  my 
withers  are  unwrung. ' '  And  we  also  have  seen 
this  same  phenomenon.  We  have  seen  judges 
on  the  bench,  of  notoriously  evil  lives,  who  have 
punished  others  for  the  sins  of  which  they 
themselves  were  guilty;  and,  incredible  as  it 
may  appear,  they  have  not  been  wholly  insin- 
cere, because  it  is  possible  to  have  combined  in 
the  strange  heart  of  man  the  keenest  vision  of 
another's  sin  without  a  suspicion  of  the  nature 
of  our  own.  I  do  not  believe,  for  example,  that 
that  unhappy  man,  Whitaker  Wright,  who  died 
some  months  ago,  was  conscious  of  his  offence. 
I  think  he  believed  himself  entirely  just  and 
honourable  according  to  his  imperfect  notions 
of  what  justice  and  honour  meant.  And  that  is 
the  most  damning  effect  of  sin — it  blinds  us. 
a  The  god  of  this  world,"  says  the  Apostle, 
**  has  blinded  the  eyes  of  those  that  believe 
not.''  But  with  a  single  word,  when  Nathan 
enters  the  palace,  the  scales  fall  from  the  eyes 
of  David.  ^^  Thou  art  the  man,"  and  it  is  as 
though  the  whole  heavens  broke  into  flame 
about  the  unhappy  king.  The  prophet  spake, 
and  sin  became  manifest.  The  prophet  spake, 
and  the  ewe  lamb  becomes  God's  lamb,  and  the 
wrong  done  to  one  solitary  and  friendless 
human  creature  is  a  wound  made  in  the  heart  of 
God  Himself.  In  that  moment  David  knew 
what  it  was  to  cry  for  the  rocks  to  fall  and 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER     159 

cover  him  from  the  face  of  Him  who  sat  on  the 
throne  and  from  the  ivratJi  of  the  Lamb.  The 
prophet  of  conscience  had  spoken,  and  his  mes- 
sage was  unmistakable. 

Macanlay  has  a  story,  in  one  of  his  essays,  of 
a  Hindoo,  by  whom,  of  course,  every  drop  of  the 
water  of  the  Ganges  was  reverenced  as  sacred. 
A  European  gave  him  a  microscope  and  put  a 
drop  of  Ganges  water  upon  the  lens  and  bade 
him  look.  He  looked,  and  was  horrified  to  find 
that  the  sacred  Ganges  swarmed  with  pollution. 
So  he  broke  the  microscope!  That  is  what  a 
great  many  of  you  are  doing.  You  turn  from 
reproof;  you  avoid  the  messages  of  God;  you 
get  out  of  the  way  of  those  who  are  likely  to  tell 
you  things  you  don't  want  to  hear;  and,  if  you 
choose  a  minister,  you  choose  one  who  speaks 
smooth  words,  and  whose  voice  is  like  the  voice 
of  one  that  singeth  to  a  pleasant  instrument.  I 
call  that  breaking  the  microscope.  And  think 
of  the  futility  of  it  all !  The  drop  of  water  has 
not  ceased  to  be  impure  because  you  don't  see 
it,  and  the  Ganges  is  still  rushing  on  bearing  all 
its  deadly  infections  with  it.  Moreover,  to 
have  seen  it  once  is  to  see  it  forever,  for  the 
memory  has  an  eye.  Look  at  the  truth,  then, 
however  horrible  it  is.  Don't  try  to  hide  your- 
self under  shams  and  pretences,  for  there  is  no 
regeneration  and  no  redemption  for  the  man 
who  won't  look  at  the  plain  truth  about  himself. 


160       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

I  will  tell  yon  what  has  cut  me  most  to  the 
heart  in  the  work  I  have  tried  to  do  during  the 
past  twelve  months.  It  is  this :  I  have  met  men, 
again  and  again,  in  whom  there  is  no  truth. 
They  will  not  face  up  to  the  facts  of  their  own 
case.  They  will  tell  me  they  have  signed  the 
pledge  and  are  keeping  it,  when  they  reek  of 
drink,  and  they  think  I  am  fool  enough  not  to 
smell  it.  You  may  smile,  but  is  there  anything 
more  terrible  and  tragic  than  this  utter  crum- 
bling away  of  character,  when  a  man  has  not 
enough  honesty  left  in  him  to  face  the  truth 
about  himself?  If  I  despair  of  any  man,  I 
despair  of  that  man,  because  I  do  not  know  how 
to  deal  with  him.  He  is  like  a  rotten  wall. 
Every  time  you  knock  the  nail  in,  it  falls  out 
again.  I  plead,  therefore,  with  any  one  here 
whose  conscience  troubles  him  about  his  sins, 
and  r  say,  **  For  God's  sake,  be  honest  with 
yourself.  No  equivocation,  no  evasion.  Look 
the  plain  truth  in  the  face.  Advise,  and  tell 
this  prophet  of  conscience  what  reply  he  is  to 
give  to  Him  who  sent  him." 

And  then  there  is  one  other  prophet,  and  this 
prophet  also  comes  to  us  all — the  Prophet  of 
Eedemption.  No  cowled  and  awful  figure  this, 
bearing  the  books  of  life  and  time :  no  prophet 
of  conscience,  clad  in  flame  and  with  the  fiery 
sword  that  turns  both  ways,  but  One  very  meek 
and  quiet,  yet  with  a  more  awful  light  upon  His 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER     161 

brow  than  Nathan  even  had,  and  in  His  hands 
there  are  wound-prints,  and  from  His  side  a 
broken  heart  pours  out  its  life-blood,  and  His 
likeness  is  as  the  likeness  of  a  Man. 

Long  ago  the  sacred  poet  foresaw  Him,  and 
cried:  **  Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom, 
with  dyed  garments  from  Bozrah?  And 
wherefore  art  Thou  red  in  Thine  apparel,  and 
Thy  garments  like  His  that  treadeth  the  wine- 
press? ''  And  He  gave  this  great  reply:  ^^  I 
am  He  that  speaketh  in  righteousness,  mighty 
to  save;  for  I  looked,  and  there  was  none  to 
help.  I  wondered  that  there  was  none  to  up- 
hold: therefore  My  own  arm  brought  salva- 
tion.'' And  a  thousand  times  ten  thousand 
have  seen  Him  since,  and  have  rejoiced.  They 
have  seen  what  Malvolti,  the  murderer  in 
*'  John  Inglesant,''  saw,  One  drawing  near, 
worn  and  pale,  but  full  of  undying  love  and  un- 
quenchable resolve,  who  says :  *  *  What  doest 
thou  here!  Knowest  thou  not  that  thou  art 
Mine  1  Thrice  Mine — Mine  centuries  ago  when 
I  hung  upon  the  cross  on  Calvary  for  such  as 
thee ;  Mine  years  ago  when  thou  camest  a  little 
child  to  the  font;  and  Mine  even  now,  mur- 
derer as  thou  art?  "  And  with  the  accent  of 
that  voice  a  healing  sense  of  help  and  comfort 
visited  the  weary  heart.  For  this  Prophet  of 
Redemption  comes  not  to  kill,  but  to  save.  His 
is  the  voice  that  says:  **  Come  unto  Me,  and  I 


162       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

will  give  you  rest  ";  and  when  His  finger 
touches  the  blotted  page,  behold!  it  becomes 
clean,  and  when  His  hand  is  laid  upon  the  soiled 
and  sorrowing  heart  it  creates  new  life  and  new 
joy. 

My  brethren,  what  have  you  to  say  to  Jesus 
to-night?  He  puts  to  you  the  old  question: 
"  Will  ye  be  My  disciples!  ''  ''  What  think  ye 
of  Christ?  '^  For  you  must  give  an  answer  if 
only  for  this  plain  reason:  your  character  and 
life  are  always  moving  towards  finality.  Al- 
ready you  have  said  yea  to  Christ  in  many  a 
good  impulse,  and  you  have  said  nay  in  many  a 
bad  impulse.  You  have  said  yea  in  every  striv- 
ing after  right,  in  every  prayer  for  help,  in 
every  secret  tear  for  sin  or  folly;  and  you  say 
nay  in  every  act  of  deliberate  resistance  to  the 
call  of  the  better  self  within  you.  And  you 
know  that  these  messages,  spoken  in  the  quiet  of 
your  own  hearts,  are  real  messages.  O  young 
man,  was  not  that  a  real  message  from  God  that 
came  to  you  that  morning  when  you  woke  up  out 
of  a  night  of  sin,  not  merely  sorry  for  yourself, 
but  sick  of  yourself,  and  with  a  living  horror  of 
yourself?  Was  not  it  a  Divine  message  that 
spoke  to  you,  you  older  man,  when  you  broke 
down  in  your  business  career,  and  for  many 
months  had  to  be  quiet  and  silent,  and  had  to 
think  about  the  things  that  you  had  been  for- 
getting all  your  life?    Was  not  that  a  Divine 


GOD  WAITING  MAN'S  ANSWER     163 

message  tliat  came  to  you,  O  frivolous  and  vain 
woman,  when  the  little  child  went  out  of  your 
home,  and  it  seemed  to  you  that  all  God's  angels 
stood  about  the  little  coffin  and  whispered  to 
you  how  good  a  thing  it  would  be  if  only  you 
would  live  so  as  to  meet  that  sweet  child  again? 
You  have  had  your  messages,  and  now  you  must 
give  your  answers.  It  has  often  been  said  of 
the  preacher  that  he  differs  from  the  barrister 
in  this  important  fact :  the  barrister  speaks  for 
a  verdict  and  the  minister  does  not.  I  speak 
for  a  verdict  on  behalf  of  my  Lord  and  Master. 
Advise,  and  tell  me  what  I  am  to  say  to  Him 
who  has  sent  me.  It  is  no  use  merely  talking 
about  religion  night  after  night.  The  time  has 
come  to  do  something.  Is  there  no  one  here  to- 
night who,  before  the  next  moment  on  the  clock 
marks  its  irreparable  limit,  in  his  heart  will 
say :  ^  ^  Jesus,  I  am  upon  Thy  side.  I  come  to 
Thee.  I  pray  for  pardon.  Henceforth  I  am 
Thy  servant,  Thy  lover,  surrendered  wholly  to 
Thy  most  blessed  will  ''I  I  plead  with  you  for 
a  verdict.  Advise  now,  and  tell  me  what 
answers  shall  be  returned  to  my  Master  and 
Lord  for  the  messages  of  grace  and  love  that  I 
bring  you  in  the  Master's  name. 


VIII 

THE  LAST  STEP 

(Plymouth  Church,  Thursday,  November  17th.) 

MY    subject    to-night    is    ^'  The    Last 
Step/^  and  my  text  will  be  found  in 
Matthew  xxvi.  39:  ^^  He  went  a  little 
further." 

There  is  a  strange  pregnancy  in  these  phrases 
of  the  Gospel.  The  life  of  Jesus  is  the  most 
familiar  of  all  lives.  Its  incidents  are  con- 
stantly recited  and  reiterated.  Whole  libraries 
have  been  written  about  a  life  which  may  itself 
be  contained  within  a  few  pages,  and  one  cannot 
but  ask  how  it  is  that  the  life  of  Jesus  has  this 
imperishable  hold  upon  the  minds  of  men? 
The  answer  is  that  the  life  of  Jesus  is  the  most 
representative  of  all  lives.  It  represents,  not 
the  surfaces,  but  the  depths  of  human  lives. 
We  find  ourselves  in  Jesus ;  we  find  our  hopes, 
our  inward  struggles,  our  most  secret  aspira- 
tions, all  the  secret  biography  of  our  own 
spirits,  which  we  reveal  to  no  one,  in  the  story 
of  Jesus ;  and  hence  every  phrase  in  the  story 
has  a  strange  pregnancy,  and  looking  through 
the  smallest  phrase  there  opens  up  to  us  a  mar- 

164 


THE  LAST  STEP  165 

vellous  vista  of  self-revelation  as  well  as  Divine 
revelation. 

Now  here  is  such  a  phrase — quite  a  natural 
and  simple  phrase — necessary  to  the  narrative, 
of  which  it  forms  a  part;  but  the  moment  you 
begin  to  let  your  thought  rest  upon  it,  it  reveals 
extraordinary  depths.  *'  He  went  a  little 
further. '^  Do  you  not  already  feel  the  awful 
loneliness  conveyed  by  the  words :  the  sense  of 
separation,  the  sense  of  solitude?  Jesus  is  ap- 
proaching the  solemn  climax  of  His  life,  and  as 
He  draws  near  to  it  the  solitude  deepens.  He 
has  long  since  left  the  home  of  His  mother  and 
His  brethren,  and  will  see  it  no  more.  He  has 
but  recently  left  the  sacred  home  of  Bethany, 
that  haven  of  peace  where  He  has  often  rested, 
and  where  the  hands  of  Mary  have  anointed 
Him  against  His  burial.  He  has  even  now  left 
the  chamber  of  the  Paschal  supper,  and  the  seal 
of  finality  has  been  put  upon  His  earthly  min- 
istry in  the  drinking  of  the  cup  when  He  said  to 
His  disciples,  ^'  Remember  Me.''  He  has  just 
left  eight  of  His  disciples  at  the  outer  gate  of 
Gethsemane,  saying,  ''  Stay  ye  here  while  I  go 
and  pray  yonder.''  A  few  moments  later  and 
He  parts  from  Peter  and  James  and  John,  say- 
ing, ' '  Tarry  ye  here  and  watch  with  Me, ' '  and 
He  went  a  little  further.  It  was  but  a  stone's 
throw,  says  St.  Luke,  and  yet  an  infinite  gulf 
now  lay  between  Him  and  them.    And  so  it  is 


166       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

always  in  human  life.  We  must  needs  go  to 
the  most  sacred  places  of  our  life  alone.  We 
can  bear  no  witnesses  when  the  agony  of  life 
gathers  around  us.  We  must  needs  go  a  little 
further  beyond  the  kind  gaze  of  friends,  beyond 
their  pity  and  their  help,  when  the  great 
transactions  of  the  soul  are  to  be  achieved. 
' '  He  went  a  little  further, "  as  it  were  a  stone 's 
throw,  but  in  these  few  steps  our  Lord  passed 
from  the  loud  life  of  the  world  into  the  silent 
places  of  the  infinite  and  the  eternal. 

Now  this  loneliness  of  life  in  its  common 
forms  we  all  know  something  about.  We  know, 
for  instance,  that  the  parting  of  friends  is  one 
of  the  commonest  experiences  of  life.  People 
come  into  our  lives  for  a  time;  they  seem  in- 
separable from  us,  and  then  by  force  of  circum- 
stances or  by  some  slowly  widening  difference 
of  temper  or  opinion,  or  by  one  of  those  many 
social  forms  of  separation  of  which  life  is  full, 
they  slowly  drift  out  of  our  touch  and  our  life. 
*^  We  must  part,  as  all  human  creatures  have 
parted,"  wrote  Dean  Swift  to  Alexander  Pope, 
and  there  is  no  sadder  sentence  than  that  in 
human  biography.  It  strikes  upon  the  ear  like 
a  knell.  The  tragedy  of  long  life  often  lies  in 
its  final  solitude.  The  old  man  has  outlived 
friends  and  kinsfolk,  and  even  children.  Some 
have  tarried  here  and  some  there  upon  the  way, 
and  you  have  had  to  go  on.    If  you  thought 


THE  LAST  STEP  167 

much  about  these  things,  which,  by  the  mercy  of 
God  you  do  not,  life  would  become  intolerable  to 
you  in  its  retrospects.  But  it  is  quite  another 
form  of  loneliness  that  we  find  here:  it  is  the 
loneliness  of  the  hero  and  the  thinker.  The 
first  law  of  all  heroism  is  the  courage  to  go  on 
when  others  are  left  behind.  The  acceptance 
of  loneliness  is  the  necessary  condition  of  all 
rare  and  difficult  achievement.  Think  of  what 
that  ''  little  further  "  meant  for  Christ.  Why, 
the  whole  world's  redemption  depended  upon 
that  last  step.  All  the  exquisite  teaching  of  the 
Galilean  lake  would  have  been  lost  to  the  world 
if  Jesus  had  refused  the  last  step  that  took  Him 
to  Gethsemane  and  the  Cross.  And  that  step 
He  must  take  alone,  because  none  but  Himself 
understood  its  meaning  and  its  necessity.  The 
disciples  who  loved  Him  best  did  not  under- 
stand it.  They  did  not  understand  it  because 
they  loved  Him.  There  had  already  been  times 
in  their  history  when  they  turned  back  from 
Christ.  Christ  alone  knew  that  His  path  lay 
through  Gethsemane,  and  He  knew  that  He 
must  take  it  alone.  The  great  hero  must  always 
act  in  that  spirit  if  he  is  to  succeed.  We  are  all 
of  us  apt  to  rest  too  much  upon  one  another  for 
support,  and  we  fear  to  take  our  own  way 
according  to  the  conviction  of  our  own  souls. 
But  no  boldness  of  thought  and  no  heroism  of 
conduct  will  ever  be  possible  to  us  until  we  have 


168       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

learned  to  stand  alone  and  to  ''go  a  little 
further.''  You  remember  that  the  favourite 
lines  of  General  Gordon,  which  he  often  quoted 
in  those  splendid  lonely  days  at  Khartoum, 
were  the  lines  taken  from  Browning's  ''  Para- 
celsus " — 

**  I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way, 
I  shall  arrive  I  what  time,  what  circuit  first, 
I  ask  not :  but  unless  God  send  His  hail, 
Or  blinding  fireballs,  sleet  or  stifling  snow, 
In  some  time,  His  good  time,  I  shall  arrive: 
He  guides  me  and  the  bird." 

General  Gordon  took  that  last  great  and 
lonely  step  into  the  terrible  Gethsemane  of 
martyrdom.  The  man  who  will  not  face  Geth- 
semane and  the  loneliness  of  it  cannot  be  a  hero. 

Now,  for  us  this  theme  has  a  cogent  and,  I 
hope,  personal  application.  Has  it  not  sug- 
gested to  you  already  what  it  suggests  to  my 
mind,  viz.,  how  many  of  us  fail  for  lack  of  the 
last  step?  What  is  the  secret  of  great  men? 
Is  it  not  this :  that  they  have  gone  just  a  step 
further  than  their  fellows?  Is  it  not  that  they 
have  put  upon  themselves  and  upon  their  task 
just  that  touch  of  consecration  which  their  fel- 
lows lacked?  They  have  dared  to  go  a  step 
further  into  the  dark  and  more  difficult  places 
of  achievement.  You  can  find  a  hundred  men 
of  high  intellectual  competence  for  one  man  of 
genius,  and  you  can  find  a  hundred  men  of 


THE  LAST  STEP  169 

ordinary  bravery  for  one  hero,  and  the  differ- 
ence between  the  one  and  the  other  is  this :  in 
the  great  genius  and  in  the  great  hero  there  is 
just  that  touch  of  daring  temper,  of  abandon- 
ment of  self,  that  makes  them  go  a  step  further 
into  some  lonely  and  difficult  place  where  others 
will  not  venture.  You  remember  the  historical 
contrast  between  Erasmus  and  Luther.  We 
think  of  Erasmus  and  Luther  in  a  very  different 
way.  For  the  one  we  have  admiration,  for  the 
other  we  have  passionate  affection  and  rever- 
ence, and  the  difference  of  our  appreciation  is 
the  difference  in  the  men.  Erasmus  says,  as 
the  darkness  thickens  around  him : '  ^  I  intend  to 
be  true  to  the  truth  as  far  as  the  times  will 
allow.  ^  *  Luther  says :  ^ '  Here  I  take  my  stand. 
I  cannot  retract."  Erasmus  is  not  going  to 
take  the  step  further ;  Luther  took  it.  And,  my 
brethren,  it  is  the  last  step  that  tells.  The 
world  is  full  of  men  who  just  miss  sainthood 
and  just  miss  the  highest  and  most  beautiful 
kind  of  fame  because  they  won't  take  the  last 
step. 

Think  for  a  moment  of  the  story  of  the  young 
ruler,  as  you  read  it  in  the  Gospels.  The  young 
ruler  had  gone  a  long  way  toward  a  perfect  life. 
He  was  pure — fastidiously  pure — high-minded, 
noble-spirited,  but  he  would  not  take  the  last 
step  of  complete  renunciation.  He  lacked  one 
thing,  and  that  was  complete  indifference  to  the 


170       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

world  and  its  wealth  for  the  sake  of  truth. 
That  was  the  last  step  for  him,  and  when  he  was 
face  to  face  with  the  Gethsemane  of  renuncia- 
tion he  had  ^^  great  possessions  '^  and  ^^  went 
away  grieved, ' '  and  would  not  enter.  Will  you 
consult  your  own  hearts  for  a  moment  and  tell 
me  whether  that  story  is  not  in  essence  your 
story?  All  that  lies  between  you  and  the 
Divine  life  is  a  single  step,  a  single  act.  There 
is  some  secret  attachment  to  the  world,  some 
reluctance  to  break  the  law  of  social  convention, 
some  remnant  of  a  false  pride,  but  there  it  is. 
You  are  but  a  stone's  cast  from  the  kingdom, 
yet  you  cannot,  or  will  not,  take  the  last  step. 
Jesus  teaches  you  this  great  lesson:  that  the 
step  must  be  taken,  and  if  it  is  to  be  taken  it  will 
only  be  by  consulting  your  own  soul,  as  in  the 
presence  of  God,  and  listening  to  no  human 
voice.  Say  to  your  friends,  say  to  the  whole 
world:  ^^  Tarry  ye  here.  I  am  going  to  meet 
my  God  and  settle  matters  with  Him. ' '  That  is 
what  the  last  step  means. 

There  was  a  man  who  came  into  the  inquiry- 
room  during  a  mission  in  my  own  church  whose 
story  was  a  singular  one.  He  was  a  gentleman 
by  birth  and  education,  and  had  held  a  con- 
siderable and  responsible  position  in  the  Brit- 
ish army.  He  had  been  a  moral,  a  high-living, 
and  apparently  Christian  man  for  years,  but  in 
his  career  there  was  one  thing  that  poisoned 


THE  LAST  STEP  171 

and  spoiled  his  life — the  memory  of  a  sin.  He 
thought  (and  perhaps  he  had  reason  to  think) 
that  in  a  certain  transaction  years  before  he 
had  not  been  strictly  honest.  This  had  troubled 
him.  The  gentleman  who  spoke  to  him  upon 
the  matter  said  (and  I  think  it  was  a  very  wise 
and  tactful  way  of  putting  the  truth  to  him), 
"  Sir,  I  think  I  can  understand  how  you  feel. 
It  is  like  a  grain  of  sand  in  the  eye;  it  is  not 
much,  but  you  will  never  be  at  ease  until  it  is 
taken  out. ' '  The  man  drew  himself  up  and  re- 
plied :  ' '  That  is  perfectly  true.  I  will  go  home 
and  this  night  I  will  write  a  full  account  of  what 
happened  years  ago.  I  will  send  it  to  the  War 
Office  and  stand  by  the  result.''  Now,  here  was 
a  man  who  for  twenty  years  had  been  kept  back 
from  the  last  step  by  a  single  grain  of  sand,  as 
it  were,  and  it  had  marred  his  life. 

The  words  of  Jesus  are  full  of  lessons  upon 
this  theme.  Do  you  remember  His  story  of  the 
pearl  f  The  man  who  had  many  goodly  pearls 
saw  a  better  pearl,  and  having  seen  it,  he  sold 
all  that  he  had  to  buy  the  perfect  pearl.  I 
thought  of  that  passage  the  other  day  when,  in 
a  certain  city,  a  great  merchant  showed  me  in 
his  shop  a  dish  of  pearls  and  began  to  explain 
their  qualities  to  me.  Even  to  my  inexperi- 
enced eye  some  appeared  to  be  faulty,  and  when 
he  put  a  pearl  perfect  in  shape  and  lustre  along- 
side the  others  I  said:  ''  If  I  were  going  to  buy 


172       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

pearls,  I  would  liave  that  one — it  is  a  perfect 
one.''  So  Christ  pictures  a  man  who,  having 
seen  a  perfect  thing,  will  not  put  up  with  an 
imperfect  one.  But  alas!  for  most  of  us,  we 
are  content  with  flawed  virtues  and  mediocre 
qualities.  We  hesitate  to  sacrifice  what  is 
necessary  for  the  best.  "What  is  it  that  holds 
us  back  from  the  sacrifice?  Is  it  anything 
worth  keeping?  We  know  when  we  look  into 
our  own  hearts  that  it  is  not.  There  is  noth- 
ing that  we  have  and  that  we  can  surrender 
that  is  worth  keeping  at  the  price  of  losing 
Christ. 

Let  me  speak  for  a  moment  to  the  Church  and 
to  Christians,  for  it  seems  to  me  that  this  lesson 
comes  home  to  us  also.  It  is  not  for  want  of 
divine  and  lofty  ideals  that  the  Church  has 
failed  to  assert  and  maintain  its  authority  over 
human  conduct.  Love,  charity,  self-sacrifice, 
brotherhood — to  what  church  will  you  go  where 
you  will  not  hear  the  golden  chime  of  these 
words  ringing  like  heavenly  music?  The 
Christian  life — who  questions  that  there  are 
multitudes  of  people  who  do,  according  to  their 
measure,  try  to  live  that  life  ?  Ah,  but  how  f e"W 
of  us  are  prepared  to  take  the  last  step  and  to 
encounter  real  sacrifices  for  and  with  Jesus 
Christ?  When  it  comes  to  a  real  contempt  for 
the  world's  opinion,  a  real  adherence  to  prin- 
ciple which  involves  persecution ;  when  it  comes 


THE  LAST  STEP  173 

to  a  real  love  for  publicans  and  sinners,  a 
definite  and  deep  resolve  to  count  all  things  but 
loss  for  the  sake  of  Christ,  then  how  few  of  us 
are  ready  to  take  the  last  step ! 

What  the  Church  needs  to-day  is  not  defend- 
ers of  the  faith,  however  eloquent  or  wise,  but 
the  actual  spectacle  of  Christian  lives  which  are 
wholly  distinct  and  distinguishable  from  the 
lives  of  worldly  men — lives  content  and  meek 
and  laborious,  lives  consistently  devoted  to  the 
service  of  mankind,  lives  that  have  taken  the 
last  step  of  complete  surrender  to  the  will  of 
God.  And  when  the  Church  is  filled  with  men 
and  women  who  live  those  lives  we  shall  not 
need  to  pray  at  every  meeting,  ^*  Thy  kingdom 
come,''  for  the  proclamation  will  go  forth, 
**  The  kingdoms  of  this  world  have  become  the 
kingdoms  of  God  and  of  His  Christ.''  And  if 
you  would  know  how  true  this  is,  glance  back 
through  the  shadows  of  the  past  to  the  early 
Church.  Witness  the  astounding  conquest  that 
a  handful  of  unlettered  and  ignorant  men  made 
of  the  great  pagan  world.  How  did  they  do  it? 
They  overcame  the  world  by  renouncing  it. 
They  were  not  afraid  of  Gethsemane.  They 
dared  to  suffer,  they  dared  to  die.     They 

**  Fought  against  frowns  with  smiles,  gave  glorious  chase 
To  persecutions,  and  against  the  face 
Of  death  and  fiercest  dangers  durst  with  brave 
And  stalwart  steps  march  on  to  meet  a  grave." 


174       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

And  you  can  see  the  same  spectacle  to-day  if 
you  look  in  the  right  direction.  The  man  who 
succeeds  in  extending  God's  kingdom  is  the  man 
who  makes  himself  of  no  reputation.  The  man 
who  succeeds  in  his  own  lifetime  in  seeing  the 
kingdom  grow  up  in  stability  and  beauty  is  the 
man  who  thinks  nothing  of  himself,  who  goes  a 
little  further  beyond  the  spheres  of  self-interest 
and  self -thought  into  the  realm  where  nothing 
but  complete  surrender  to  Christ  is  possible. 
Ah!  let  the  Church  ponder  this  word,  for  it  is 
at  once  the  reproach  and  the  inspiration  of  the 
Church.  And  it  may  be  but  a  very  little  further 
that  you  and  I  need  to  go  to  turn  defeat  into 
victory.  Just  one  last  touch  of  self-sacrifice 
and  we  also  may  see  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
and  the  conquest  of  the  Cross. 

Jesus  ^  ^  went  a  little  further, ' '  and  He  found 
God  in  the  gloom.  Eemember  that  for  these 
disciples  there  was  no  God  in  Gethsemane. 
There  was  only  the  misery  of  lost  faith  and 
present  failure.  They  followed  Christ  to  the 
gateway  of  Gethsemane  and  there  all  clue  to 
the  meaning  of  the  Divine  life  seemed  lost. 
They  were  '^  sleeping  for  sorrow/'  says  St. 
Luke — men  worn  out,  broken  with  misery,  con- 
scious of  the  footfall  of  approaching  tragedy. 
Jesus  entered  Gethsemane,  and  there  He  found 
God  and  the  clue  of  life  became  clear.  He  found 
the  clue  of  life  when  He  said :  ^  ^  Not  My  will, 


THE  LAST  STEP  175 

but  Thine,  be  done/'  And  so  you  find  that 
from  this  moment  Jesus  moves  to  His  end  in 
majestic  calm.  The  agony  is  passed,  and  it  is 
passed  for  ever.  He  knows  the  darkness  but 
the  shadow  of  God's  wing.  He  speaks  hence- 
forth as  one  who  sees  the  dawn,  and  has  the 
light  of  dawn  upon  His  brow. 

Long  before,  in  the  history  of  his  race,  a  man 
had  entered  into  the  same  awful  gloom  and  had 
wrestled  with  an  angel  in  the  dark,  and  had 
come  forth  from  the  conflict  with  a  new  name 
and  nature.  Jesus  repeats  the  experience  of 
Jacob,  and  the  lesson  is  the  same  in  each  his- 
tory. The  lesson  is  that  our  truest  and  deepest 
experience  of  God  is  often  won  out  of  our 
darkest  hours. 

I  always  find  it  difficult  to  speak  of  these 
things  for  fear  that  I  may  seem  insincere,  but 
may  I  put  to  you  an  interrogation  for  a  mo- 
ment! I  will  venture  to  ask  those  whose  ex- 
perience of  life  has  been  the  most  profound,  and 
who  may  be  trusted  to  tell  the  truth  about  it, 
whether  they  have  not  found,  again  and  again, 
that  their  darkest  hour  has  brought  with  it  the 
brightest  revelation  of  God?  I  do  not  say  it  is 
always  so.  It  will  depend  upon  what  kind  of 
spirit  we  ourselves  bring  to  the  dark  hour.  I 
have  known  men  whose  whole  religion  seemed 
to  evaporate  at  the  first  touch  of  sorrow,  but  on 
the  other  hand  I  have  known  men  who  have  felt 


176       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

that  they  never  had  God^s  hand  really  close  in 
theirs  until  they  clasped  it  in  the  dark.  There 
is  a  friend  of  mine,  a  dear  and  brilliant  friend, 
whose  name  would  be  honoured  by  you  all  if  I 
were  free  to  mention  it.  He  told  me  the  other 
day  the  darkest  chapter  of  his  life.  He  told  me 
how  his  whole  life  lay  suddenly  broken  off  in 
disaster :  his  work  ended,  his  heart  broken,  him- 
self in  hospital  suffering  cruel  pain.  And  then 
he  said:  ^^  Oh,  Dawson,  what  visions  of  God  I 
had  as  I  lay  in  hospital !  what  a  sense  of  eter- 
nity, and  the  reality  of  things  spiritual !  I  tell 
you,  if  I  knew  to-day  I  could  only  gain  such 
visions  of  God  and  truth  by  repeating  my  suf- 
ferings I  would  crawl  upon  my  hands  and 
knees  across  this  continent  to  get  that  disease ! ' ' 
Ah!  there  lies  the  justification  of  our  Geth- 
semanes.  We  need  the  utter  loneliness,  we 
need  the  separation  from  friend  and  lover,  to 
make  us  sure  of  God.  ^^  And  Jacob  was  left 
alone,''  says  the  older  record;  ^*  and  there 
wrestled  a  man  with  him  till  the  breaking  of  the 
day."  Even  so — till  the  breaking  of  the  day, 
for  the  divinest  of  all  dawns  shines  in  the  Geth- 
semane  of  sacrifice. 

I  will  venture  to  give  the  phrase  yet  one  more 
application.  There  are  many  people  who  fail 
to  find  God  because  they  will  not  go  far  enough 
in  search  of  Him.  There  was  no  God,  I  repeat, 
at  that  hour  for  the  disciples  who  stood  outside 


THE  LAST  STEP  177 

the  gate  of  Gethsemane.  They  saw  nothing  but 
evil  trampling  upon  good,  nothing  but  the  vic- 
torious powers  of  darkness,  nothing  but  a  con- 
fused, anarchic  world  in  which  righteousness 
was  a  lost  cause.  But  Jesus  knew  better.  He 
entered  the  gloom  and  found  the  Father  there. 
Be  sure  of  it,  in  the  worst  darkness  God  is  to  be 
found.  He  is  to  be  found  where  it  seems  un- 
likeliest  that  you  should  find  Him.  Some  of 
you  are  doubting  the  goodness  and  existence  of 
God  because  you  see  so  many  sad  things  in  the 
world.  If  you  would  only  go  a  little  nearer  to 
the  heart  of  things  you  might  find,  as  a  German 
poet  puts  it,  that — 

•'  Everything  inferior  is  a  higher  in  the  making, 
Everything  hateful  is  a  coming  beautiful, 
And  everything  evil  is  a  coming  good." 

March  boldly  into  the  dark  Gethsemane,  and 
you  will  find,  not  only  the  sweat  of  blood,  but 
the  Angel  that  strengthens  you,  the  angel  of 
peace  in  the  house  of  sorrow,  and  the  angel  of 
patience  in  the  house  of  poverty,  and  the  angel 
of  the  resurrection  in  the  house  of  death.  And 
it  may  be  if  some  of  you  who  doubt  would  go  a 
little  further  and  doubt  your  own  doubts,  if  you 
would  just  risk  one  final  struggle  for  faith,  you 
also  would  find  your  doubts  gone  and  the  angel 
would  strengthen  you.  *^  Jesus  went  a  little 
further,''  and  He  met  the  angels. 


178       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

The  last  thing  I  want  to  say  to-night  is  that 
religion  is  the  intimate  contact  of  the  individual 
soul  with  God,  and  it  needs  no  intermediary. 
The  preacher  may  help  you,  but  the  preacher 
cannot  do  your  thinking  for  you;  he  cannot  do 
your  believing  for  you.  You  yourself  have  to 
come  at  last  to  the  realisation  of  the  fact  that  in 
all  the  world  there  is  only  you  and  God,  the  soul 
and  its  Creator,  the  Father  and  the  child,  the 
spirit  and  its  Eedeemer — only  you  and  God. 
Every  other  human  presence  vanished,  and 
through  the  great  abyss  your  spirit  answering 
to  the  spirit  that  made  you;  and  this  fact,  that 
the  human  spirit  can  thus  come  close  to  God,  is 
a  fact  justified  by  human  experience.  A  day  or 
two  before  I  left  home  an  old  minister  came  to 
see  me.  He  was  eighty-four,  and  as  he  went 
down  the  steps  from  my  house  he  shook  my 
hand  and  said :  ^ '  I  would  like  to  say  that  every- 
thing is  growing  brighter  and  happier  with  me 
every  day.  My  friends, ' '  he  added,  ^ '  don't  like 
me  to  go  out  alone,  because  they  are  afraid  I 
may  drop  dead,  but  if  I  drop  dead  here  I  shall 
be  alive  and  happy  up  there  '';  and  the  old, 
white-headed  man  went  away  with  his  face 
shining  like  an  angePs.  That  is  an  authentic 
human  experience.  What  that  man  found  you 
may  find — the  serenity  of  the  perfect  peace,  joy, 
and  trust  in  God ;  and  the  last  step  of  faith  that 
takes  you  to  your  God  is  the  step  that  counts 


THE  LAST  STEP  179 

for  everything.  '^  The  little  more,  how  much 
it  is ;  the  little  less,  how  far  away !  ' ' 

Oh,  brother,  oh,  sister,  won't  you  for  a  mo- 
ment to-night  think  of  what  it  is,  and  how  little 
it  is,  that  keeps  you  from  being  a  true  Chris- 
tian ?  It  will  be  no  comfort  to  you  to  say,  in  the 
hour  when  you  come  to  die :  ' '  I  very  nearly 
took  the  last  step  once.  I  was  at  a  meeting  in 
Plymouth  Church,  and  the  truth  laid  hold  of 
me,  and  I  was  almost  a  Christian.  It  might 
have  been." 

"  Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen, 
The  saddest  are  these,  '  It  might  have  been.'  " 

My  brother,  take  the  last  step  to-night.  Take 
it  now.  You  have  but  a  little  further  to  go,  it 
may  be  to  Christ.  You  have  but  to  make  one 
swift  decision:  you  have  but  to  collect  the  im- 
pressions of  years  into  one  solemn  vow,  one 
definite  act  of  surrender  and  consecration. 
And  behold,  this  is  the  accepted  time,  this  is  the 
Day  of  Salvation. 


IX 

TO  THE  UTTERMOST 

{Plymouth  Church,  Friday,  November  18th.) 

THE  two  passages  upon  which  I  shall 
base  my  address  are  to  found  in 
Hebrews  ii.  8 :  ^  ^  But  we  see  Jesus  ' ' ; 
and  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  the  same  epistle 
and  the  twenty-fourth  verse,  ^^  Wherefore  He 
is  able  to  save  them  to  the  uttermost  that  come 
unto  God  by  Him. ' ' 

The  great  conception  of  the  writer  of  this 
Epistle,  whom  we  may  suspect  to  have  been  St. 
Paul,  is  Jesus  Christ  as  the  centre  of  humanity 
and  the  centre  of  the  universe;  the  centre  of 
authority,  love,  worship,  and  service — all  things 
converging  on  Christ ;  all  things  radiating  from 
Christ.  He  sees  Christ  as  the  holiest  among 
the  mighty,  the  mightiest  among  the  holy, 
crowned  with  many  crowns ;  the  King  of  kings, 
the  Lord  of  lords.  He  is  the  Lord  of  two 
worlds — one  that  is  in  accord,  the  other  that  is 
in  revolt — and  as  the  angels  worship  Him  who 
was  made  a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  by  the 
suffering  of  death,  so  men  shall  worship  Him 

180 


TO  THE  UTTERMOST  181 

who  has  been  triumphant  by  sacrifice.  Jesus 
must  reign  until  He  has  put  all  enemies  under 
His  feet.  All  the  worlds  are  hastening  to  the 
coronation  of  Jesus,  and  last  of  all,  the  world 
which  He  purchased  with  His  own  blood  shall 
own  His  sway,  and  so  Christ  shall  be  all  and 
in  all. 

Now,  that  is  a  magnificent  conception  beyond 
doubt,  but  the  ordinary  man  will  say :  ^  ^  What 
has  it  to  do  with  me?  It  may  interest  the 
dreamer  of  dreams  and  the  writer  of  epics  and 
the  master  of  intricate  and  sublime  theologies, 
but  what  relation  has  it  with  common  men  and 
women  toiling  in  a  difficult  and  harsh  world?  '' 
The  answer  is  that  Paul  also  toiled  in  a  difficult 
and  harsh  world,  and  he  found  that  world  in- 
tolerable except  for  the  vision  of  Jesus.  Every 
plainest,  humblest  man  needs  and  seeks  some 
explanation  of  the  world  in  which  he  lives. 
There  is  nothing  more  pathetic  in  recent  litera- 
ture than  the  closing  sentence  of  Herbert  Spen- 
cer's autobiography,  in  which  he  says  that  he 
has  come  to  '^  regard  religious  creeds  with  a 
sympathy  based  on  community  of  need/' 
Spencer  felt  that  he  needed  something  he  had 
not  found.  Paul  felt  that  he  could  not  live 
without  an  explanation  of  the  world,  and  the 
explanation  of  the  world  for  Paul,  as  it  has 
been  for  multitudes  through  the  ages,  is  Jesus 
Christ. 


182       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

'^  We  see  Jesus. '^  What  is  it  that  he  sees? 
He  sees  the  lost  sovereignty  of  man.  He  sees 
something  wrong  with  man.  There  is  some- 
thing that  retards  him  from  greatness — all 
things  are  not  put  under  him.  He  sees,  in  the 
second  place,  the  sovereignty  regained  in  Jesus, 
because  He  has  put  under  Himself  all  things 
that  hinder  man  from  greatness.  And  so  he 
sees  Christ  as  the  last  hope  of  humanity. 
Christ  interprets  man.  Christ  vindicates  man. 
Christ  raises  man  up  to  His  own  level  and  wins 
back  for  him  his  lost  sovereignty.  ' '  He  is  able 
to  save  to  the  uttermost."  That  is  the  great 
threefold  conception  of  Christianity,  and  it  is 
as  though  from  some  shining  coign  of  vantage, 
above  the  confused  strife  of  this  unintelligible 
world,  the  Apostle  looks  far  into  the  future  and 
says :  '  ^  I  see  man,  man  with  all  his  brutality 
and  folly  and  crime,  but  I  also  see  Jesus.  I  see 
Jesus,  who,  being  man,  carried  the  manhood 
into  godhead.  He  is  the  promise  of  man's 
universal  redemption. ' ' 

Think  for  a  moment,  then,  of  what  is  meant 
by  the  lost  sovereignty  of  man,  for  that  is  the 
first  part  of  this  vision.  All  things  are  not  put 
under  him.  When  we  think  of  man  in  relation 
to  the  universe  there  are  two  moods  that  have 
power  over  us.  The  first  is  the  mood  of  un- 
bounded admiration  for  man  and  for  his  doings. 
It  is  Shakespeare's  mood  expressed  in  the  im- 


TO  THE  UTTERMOST  183 

mortal  soliloquy  of  Hamlet. — ^^  What  a  piece  of 
work  is  man!  How  noble  in  reason!  How 
infinite  in  faculty!  in  form  and  moving  how 
expressive  and  admirable;  in  action,  how  like 
an  angel !  in  apprehension,  how  like  a  god !  the 
beauty  of  the  world !  the  paragon  of  animals !  ' ' 
It  was  Dr.  Hillis '  mood  the  other  day,  when,  as 
we  walked  over  Brooklyn  Bridge,  he  pointed 
out  to  me  the  wonders  of  the  vast  structure,  and 
dilated  on  the  genius  that  planned  and  built  it. 
And  undoubtedly  we  do  see  man  perpetually 
doing  things  which  no  other  creature  upon  the 
earth  gives  a  sign  of  possessing  the  faculty  to 
do.  We  see  him  throwing  a  film  of  wire  like  a 
gossamer  round  the  earth  on  which  he  whispers 
his  thoughts,  levelling  his  tiny  lenses  against 
the  midnight  sky  and  compelling  the  firmament 
to  give  up  the  secrets  of  its  stars  and  constella- 
tions; fashioning,  from  rude  hieroglyphics, 
music  and  literature ;  taking  hold  of  matter  and 
controlling  it  with  so  marvellous  a  skill  and 
mastery  that,  looking  upon  man,  we  are 
amazed;  we  are  lost  in  admiration;  we  are  as- 
tonished at  the  brilliance  of  his  invention,  the 
restlessness  of  his  mind  and  the  resources  of 
his  will,  and  we  begin  to  understand  how  the 
primal  temptation  of  man  was  to  take  himself 
for  a  god.  For  there  is  something  of  the  lost 
sovereignty  still  left  upon  him,  and  all  the 
original  glory  has  not  yet  faded  from  his  brow, 


184       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

Ah,  but  there  is  another  mood,  a  mood  that 
comes  to  us  when  we  are  conscious,  not  of  the 
greatness  of  man,  hut  of  the  futility  and  the 
impotence  of  man.  All  things  put  under  him 
— the  lordship  of  matter — able  to  erect  a 
Brooklyn  Bridge — aye,  but  the  fool  of  destiny 
and  the  sport  of  time !  He  sows  and  he  knows 
not  who  shall  reap ;  he  heaps  up,  and  he  knows 
not  who  shall  gather ;  he  builds  his  palaces  and 
cities,  but  the  lightning  blasts  his  work  and  the 
fire  destroys  his  city;  his  life  is  not  worth  a 
moment's  purchase;  he  is  in  jeopardy  every 
hour.  Just  at  the  height  of  thought  the  brain 
snaps — he  is  an  imbecile.  Just  on  the  brink  of 
triumph  a  nerve  vibrates — he  is  a  gibbering 
paralytic.  His  plans  are  broken  off  in  ruin; 
the  tide  runs  from  him;  men  fail  him,  till,  at 
last,  in  his  bitterness,  he  cries  that  even  the 
stars  fight  against  him.  All  things  under  his 
feet!  No,  indeed,  neither  circumstance,  nor 
sorrow,  nor  pain,  nor  death ;  and  he  can  sink  so 
low,  he  can  become  so  bestial  in  his  lusts,  so 
mean  and  malevolent  in  his  acts,  that  a  dog 
might  scorn  him,  a  horse  might  refuse  com- 
panionship with  him.  All  things  are  not  put 
under  man,  and  yet  the  whisper  of  greatness 
haunts  his  mind,  the  potency  of  kinship  tortures 
him.  For  this  is  the  paradox  of  human  nature, 
greatness  and  meanness,  wisdom  and  folly 
interwoven;  and  all  this  is  expressed  by  the 


TO  THE  UTTERMOST  185 

phrase  of  the  writer  in  this  chapter  when  he 
speaks  of  the  lost  sovereignty  of  man. 

The  question,  then,  which  at  once  comes  to 
the  thoughtful  man  is,  Can  man  rise  again? 
Can  he  regain  this  lost  sovereignty?  Here  is 
man  in  thraldom — a  threefold  thraldom — to  sin, 
to  self,  to  death.  He  fails  of  moral  height  and 
grandeur  through  sin;  he  fails  of  nobility 
through  selfishness;  he  fails  of  permanence  in 
his  designs  through  death.  To  be  truly  great, 
man  should  be  sinless,  unselfish,  and  immortal. 
Can  a  man  become  that?  The  answer  is,  ''  We 
see  Jesus.'*  We  see  in  Him  complete  manhood. 
We  see  in  Christ  man  as  God  meant  man  to  be, 
and  the  great  word  comes  echoing  down  to  us 
in  its  infinite  and  almost  incredible  promise: 
''  Till  we  all  come  to  the  stature  of  a  man  in 
Christ.''  *^  We  see  Jesus  "  regaining  the  lost 
sovereignty,  but  how? 

First  of  all,  Jesus  put  sin  under  Him  and 
teaches  us  that  there  lies  the  way  of  our  de- 
liverance. The  conception  of  a  sinless  man 
exists  only  in  Christianity.  A  prophet,  a  seer, 
an  inspired  man,  one  who  holds  converse  with 
the  heavens,  that  conception  exists  in  all 
religions;  but  the  idea  of  one  who  is  sinless, 
who  never  wronged  another,  who  never  had  a 
wrong  thought,  on  whose  clear  soul  no  shadow 
of  evil  fell,  though  all  the  atmosphere  of  evil 
was  around  him  always,  this  is  the  absolutely 


186       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

unique  conception  of  Christianity,  and  it  is 
something  beyond  the  invention  of  man.  The 
blind  imagination  of  man  could  never  have 
created  that  figure  of  the  Christ,  tempted  in  all 
points  like  as  we  are,  yet  without  sin,  but  it  was 
the  conception  of  God,  and  it  was  perfected  in 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Jesus  challenged  His  worst 
foes,  who  watched  Him  with  the  sleepless 
scrutiny  of  malice,  to  convict  Him  of  sin,  and 
they  were  silent.  He  passed  His  life,  not  in 
the  sweet  solitude  of  the  mountains,  but  in  the 
heat  and  wrong  of  cities ;  not  in  holy  seclusion, 
but  in  the  eye  of  all  men.  He  was  never  un- 
attended; He  ate  with  publicans  while  Phari- 
sees watched  Him ;  He  talked  with  sinners  while 
Sadducees  listened  to  Him;  yet  the  taint  of  all 
this  moral  leprosy  never  touched  or  soiled 
Him.  Upon  the  brink  of  death  He  declares, 
"  The  prince  of  this  world  cometh  and  hath 
nothing  in  Me.'^  His  judge  declared,  as  he 
sentenced  Him,  that  He  had  done  no  wrong  at 
all.  His  herald  proclaimed  Him  the  Lamb  of 
God ;  and  it  is  as  a  lamb,  sinned  against  but  not 
sinning,  that  He  goes  to  the  slaughter.  He  put 
sin  under  Him;  trod  it  down  as  a  venomous 
snake ;  died  with  the  whole  voice  of  heaven  and 
earth  witnessing  around  and  above  His  Cross, 
in  awful  unanimity,  that  He  died  for  sins  not 
His  own. 

And  ^^  we  see  Jesus."    We  turn  from  the 


TO  THE  UTTERMOST  187 

spectacle  of  man  in  his  abasement  as  one  in  a 
lazar-liouse  might  lift  his  head  and  see  entering 
the  abode  of  shame  the  white-robed  minister  of 
mercy  and  '^  we  see  Jesus."  We  see  that  sin- 
lessness  is  possible.  We  see  that  though  the 
serpent  has  stung  us,  yet  there  is  One  who  can 
slay  the  serpent.  And  Jesus  reveals  to  us  our 
own  future.  Jesus  shows  us  what  we  may  be 
and  become.  His  dying  lips  blow  the  trumpet 
of  hope.  His  voice  rings  round  the  world ;  hear 
it  and  rejoice!  for  it  is  the  announcement  of 
your  own  sovereignty  restored  and  your  own 
kingship  come  back  to  you — "  If  we  confess  our 
sins,  He  is  faithful  and  just  to  forgive  us  our 
sins,  and  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  His  Son 
cleanseth  us  from  all  sin." 

Man  has  failed  of  nobility  through  selfish- 
ness, and,  again, ''  we  see  Jesus."  What  is  the 
source  of  all  human  sin  but  selfishness  ?  Wliat 
is  the  source  of  that  act  which  takes  the  wealth 
of  life  for  yourself  and  leaves  your  fellow-man 
to  starve  unpitied?  What  is  the  root  of  that 
pleasure  of  passion  which  for  a  moment  of 
intoxicating  delight  will  fling  a  wrong  and 
blighted  woman  on  the  world's  highway,  to  be 
spurned  by  the  wicked,  scorned  by  the  right- 
eous, picked  by  the  vulture,  and  flung  as  carrion 
to  the  tomb?  What  is  it  that  fills  our  city 
streets  with  wasted  faces  and  our  city  graves 
with  broken  hearts!    Selfishness.    Men  live  for 


188       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

themselves;  love  tliemselves ;  think  only  of 
themselves ;  and  then  self  masters  them.  They 
become  its  slaves ;  they  cease  to  have  dominion 
over  their  baser  lusts;  they  come  under  the 
power  of  those  passions  which  God  meant  they 
should  be  over  in  just  and  righteous  mastery. 
Oh,  do  you  despair  when  you  think  of  it?  Do 
you  say,  '^  1  was  born  a  slave,  a  slave  I  must 
die.  I  cannot  break  the  chain.  I  know  I  am 
selfish  ' '  ?  Oh,  coward,  hearken !  ^  ^  We  see 
Jesus,"  born  as  we  were  born;  dying  as  we 
must  die;  Jesus,  who  never  did  a  selfish  deed; 
Jesus,  whose  life  was  one  long  and  perfect  sac- 
rifice, and  He  stands  beside  the  Cross  of  Cal- 
vary red  with  His  own  blood,  and  lifts  His 
wounded  hand  to  proclaim  liberty  to  the  captive 
and  the  opening  of  prison  doors  to  them  that 
are  bound.  Christ  puts  self  beneath  His  feet, 
and  so  points  you  the  way  back  to  your  lost 
kinship. 

And  Christ  also  puts  death  beneath  His  feet. 
Have  you  ever  thought  of  death  as  the  last 
revenge  of  sin?  It  turns  the  fair  body  into  cor- 
ruption, for  it  is  by  and  through  corruption  that 
it  receives  its  power  and  mandate.  It  treads 
the  body,  the  work  of  God,  down  beneath  its 
iron  feet,  and  the  ^'  sting  of  death  is  sin,"  for 
it  is  by  sin  that  death  has  gained  power  to  smite 
us  and  afflict  us  and  drag  us  down  into  the  foul 
chambers  of  decay.    Do  you  dread  death  1   Who 


TO  THE  UTTERMOST  189 

does  not?  Do  you  tremble  as  its  cold  breath 
passes  over  you?  Have  you  implored  it  to 
spare  you?  Have  you  striven  to  pluck  your 
sweet  child  from  its  grasp?  Have  you  wept 
bitter,  fruitless  tears  as  Death  went  out  of  the 
house  and  took  the  light  of  the  house  with  him? 
Hush,  weeping  Mary,  let  thy  tears  be  wiped 
away.  Look!  ^^  We  see  Jesus.''  He  stands, 
bright  and  fair,  in  the  doorway  of  the  tomb ;  no 
blood-stain  on  His  raiment,  no  sorrow  on  His 
brow,  and  two  young  men,  from  that  city  where 
men  are  never  old,  sit  in  the  empty  tomb  and 
smile,  and  He  says :  ^ '  I  am  the  resurrection  and 
the  life,  whoso  believeth  in  Me  shall  never  die. ' ' 
There  is  your  lost  sovereignty  come  back  in 
Christ.  Christ  has  thus  overcome  sin,  con- 
quered self,  and  subjugated  death,  and  ascended 
into  heaven,  leading  captivity  captive.  And 
Paul  looks  and  cries  "  All  things  are  yours." 
^'  All  things  are  yours,  whether  Paul,  or  Cephas, 
or  Apollos,  or  life  or  death."  Death  is  yours. 
You  are  no  longer  his;  for  when  you  come  to 
Christ  and  share  His  love  and  life,  you  have  got 
the  power  to  trample  sin  down;  you  have  got 
the  power  to  purge  yourself  of  self,  and  you 
will  have  the  power  to  rise  victor  over  death. 
This  is  the  great  threefold  vision  of  Christian- 
ity.    This  is  what  we  see  when  we  see  Jesus. 

This  is  what  Christ  has  done.    He  has  carried 
manhood  up  into  Godhead.    And  now,  oh,-  my 


190       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

brothers,  will  you  try  to  receive  into  your  minds 
the  most  tremendous  thought  that  can  enter  any 
human  mind?  As  Christ  was  man,  so  men  may 
be  as  Christ.  There  is  a  Christ  in  every  man,  a 
suggested  Christ,  a  concealed  Christ,  an  embryo 
Christ,  and  you  also  may  stand  victor  over  the 
foes  that  have  spoiled  your  manhood,  for  *  ^  He 
is  able  to  save  them  to  the  uttermost  that  come 
unto  God  by  Him."  Amazing  thought!  A  sub- 
lime impertinence  it  seems  for  us  even  to  use 
the  words.  Yet  the  words  of  Jesus  are  clear: 
*  *  I  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you.  Where  I  am 
ye  may  be  also."  And  the  word  of  St.  Paul  is 
clear — *'  Let  the  mind  that  was  in  Christ  be 
the  mind  that  is  in  you."  I  see  you  frail,  weak, 
sinful,  weary;  a  poor  creature  enough,  it  may 
be.  Ah,  but  I  see  Jesus  in  you,  for  even  your 
poor  heart  may  become  the  Bethlehem  of  the 
new  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God.  ''  What!  " 
you  say;  ''  do  you  really  believe  that!  Do  you 
mean  to  tell  me  that  there  is  a  Christ  in  that 
poor  drunkard  lying  in  the  gutter  to  his  shame 
and  defilement?  "  Yes,  I  do.  His  name  is 
John  Gough.  ''  What!  "  you  say;  ''  do  you 
mean  to  tell  me  that  there  is  a  Christ  concealed 
in  that  woman  laden  with  iniquity,  the  mere 
knowledge  of  whose  life  is  an  infection  to  a 
pure  imagination  ?  ' '  Yes,  I  do,  for  her  name  is 
Mary  Magdalene.  *' What?  "  you  say;  ''do 
you  mean  to  tell  me  that  there  is  a  Christ  con- 


TO  THE  UTTERMOST  191 

cealed  in  the  criminal  fresh  out  of  jail?  "  Yes, 
I  do,  for  it  was  to  a  man  like  that  Jesus  said : 
^  ^  This  day  shalt  thou  be  with  Me  in  paradise. '  ^ 
I  may  see  all  that  is  distasteful,  all  that  is  hate- 
ful, and  all  that  is  contemptible  in  you,  but  I 
also  see  Jesus  in  you.  I  see  the  Christ  that  is 
to  be.  Aye,  and  Christ  sees  Himself  in  you. 
He  saw  the  apostle  of  love  in  John,  the  son  of 
thunder,  and  He  saw  the  apostle  of  grace  in 
Saul  the  persecutor.  He  sees  Himself  in  you. 
When  Sister  Dora  lay  dying  and  wrote  her  last 
letter — her  life,  you  remember,  was  spent 
among  smallpox  patients ;  she  literally  gave  her 
life  for  others — to  a  woman  who  was  going  to 
take  up  nursing  as  a  profession,  she  said: 
**  Don't  think  of  it  as  a  profession,  but  as  you 
touch  each  patient  think  it  is  Christ  whom  you 
are  touching,  and  then  virtue  will  come  out  of 
the  touch  to  yourself. ' '  She  had  learned  to  see 
a  Christ  in  her  patients.  Christ  sees  Himself 
in  you.  And  if  you  say,  ^'  This  sounds  like  a 
dream  " ;  if  you  listen  incredulously ;  if,  know- 
ing far  more  about  your  sin  than  any  one  else 
does,  you  say,  ''  I  am  removed  whole  infinities 
from  the  character  of  Christ ;  how  can  I  live  like 
that!  '' — Jesus  speaks  to  you:  '^  He  is  able  to 
save  them  to  the  uttermost  who  come  unto  God 
by  Him.'' 

Do  you  believe  it?     Come  with  me  to  mediae- 
val times  for  a  moment,  and  look  on  this  picture 


192       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

from  the  life  of  Catherine  of  Siena.  There  was 
a  certain  criminal,  Nicolo  Tuldo,  who  was  con- 
demned to  die,  and  he  did  nothing  but  curse 
God,  so  that  no  priest  would  go  near  him.  Then 
Catherine  went,  and  he  became  quiet  as  a  child, 
and  he  made  her  promise  to  stand  beside  him  on 
the  day  of  his  execution,  and,  says  Catherine, 
speaking  of  the  scene :  ^  ^  He  laid  his  head  upon 
my  bosom,  and  I  said,  *  Comfort  thee,  my 
brother,  the  block  shall  soon  become  thy  mar- 
riage altar;  the  blood  of  Christ  shall  bathe  thy 
sins  away.'  And  when  the  time  came  for  him 
to  die  he  died  as  a  gentle  lamb,  and  his  last 
words  were,  ^  Jesus,  Catherine,  Jesus.'  " 
^*  Ah,"  but  you  say,  *^  that  is  a  mediaeval  story; 
that  happened  in  the  age  of  faith;  such  things 
do  not  happen  now."  Well,  here  is  something 
that  happened  about  a  year  ago  in  my  own 
country.  I  read  in  a  paper  one  morning  the 
story  of  a  dreadful  murder.  The  murderer  was 
condemned,  and  justly  condemned,  and,  I  said 
in  my  heart,  if  ever  a  man  deserved  to  be 
hanged  it  was  that  man.  I  felt  as  though  I 
would  like  to  see  him  hanged,  so  atrocious  was 
the  crime.  I  thought  no  more  of  it,  but  a  few 
months  later  I  met  a  friend  of  mine,  a  minister, 
who  among  other  duties  had  become  a  visiting 
chaplain  at  Wandsworth  jail,  and  he  told  me 
about  this  man,  this  execrable  villain,  this 
human  viper,  whose  crime  was  so  atrocious  that 


TO  THE  UTTERMOST  193 

men  thought  it  was  an  act  of  just  reparation  to 
society  that  he  should  be  thrust  out  of  a  decent 
world.  My  friend  told  me  how  he  went  to  see 
that  man  in  his  cell,  how  he  was  as  hard  as  iron, 
how  at  last  he  melted  a  little,  how  presently, 
with  a  burst  of  tears,  he  acknowledged  that  he 
once  had  been  in  a  Methodist  Sunday  school. 
Then  the  man's  heart  slowly,  very  slowly, 
opened.  One  night  when  my  friend  was  asleep, 
after  midnight,  there  was  a  knock  at  his  door, 
and  a  warder  stood  there  with  a  message  from 
the  governor  of  the  jail.  The  governor  of  the 
jail  was  not  a  man  likely  to  be  deceived  by  mock 
religion,  and  he  had  sent  the  warder  to  say, 
^^  Edwards  is  converted.''  Out  of  his  bed  my 
friend  leaped,  and  through  the  dark  night  he 
went  to  Wandsworth  jail  and  found  the  poor 
fellow  on  his  knees  singing  a  hymn  which  he 
had  learned  as  a  boy  in  the  Sunday  school — 

"  Although  my  sins  as  mountains  rise 
And  soar  and  reach  to  heaven, 
Forgiveness  is  above  the  skies, 
And  I  may  be  forgiven." 

When  the  time  came  for  that  poor  fellow  to 
die  he  went  down  the  dismal  path  to  the  scaffold 
softly  whispering — 

"Jesus,  lover  of  my  soul, 

Let  me  to  Thy  bosom  fly." 

That  is  not  a  mediaeval  story;  it  is  a  story  of 


194       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

yesterday.  God^s  arm  is  not  shortened  that  it 
cannot  save  even  men  like  Edwards.  God  can 
still  pluck  from  the  very  pit  of  hell  the  souls  for 
whom  Christ  died.  He  is  doing  it  every  day, 
for  He  is  able  to  save  them  to  the  uttermost  that 
come  to  Him  through  Christ. 

I  know  not  how  to  close.  I  feel  as  though  I 
could  talk  all  night  about  the  boundless  grace  of 
God ;  the  lifting  up  of  poor  sinners  into  Christ- 
hood,  into  Christ-life,  by  infinite  grace,  for  it  is 
this  fact  of  the  grace  of  God  in  the  world  which 
alone  makes  me  able  to  face  the  world.  Oh, 
there  are  times  when  we  are  blind  with  tears 
and  sick  with  misery  as  we  look  upon  the 
world — it  is  so  crammed  and  packed  with 
tragedy.  There  are  times  when  I  have  felt  the 
sin  of  others  as  almost  a  physical  defilement, 
times  when  the  struggle  to  reform  the  world  has 
seemed  almost  hopeless,  for  new  tyrannies  seem 
to  have  replaced  the  old,  and  the  ancient  wrongs 
seem  endued  with  an  indestructible  vitality. 
But  when  that  dark  mood  sweeps  over  me,  I 
look  from  man  to  God,  and  I  see  Jesus.  I  see 
that  great  vision  the  poet  Heine  had  when  he 
pictured  all  the  gods  of  wrong  and  lust  seated 
at  their  banquet-table,  and  suddenly  there 
enters  a  poor,  pale  Jew  with  a  heavy  cross  upon 
his  shoulder,  and  he  flings  down  the  cross  upon 
the  table  before  all  the  gods  of  wrong  and  lust, 
and  behold  they  tremble,  fade,  dissolve,  dis- 


TO  THE  UTTERMOST  195 

appear,  and  Jesus  only  is  left  supreme.  Ah, 
that  is  what  has  happened  in  past  history,  and 
it  is  what  is  going  to  happen  through  the  his- 
tory of  the  future.  ^'  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will 
draw  all  men  unto  Me.'' 

Let  me  plead  with  you,  my  brother,  once 
more.  It  is  possible  that  some  of  you  may  be 
led  to  say,  ^ '  Surely  you  have  made  a  mistaken 
appeal  to-night.  You  have  told  us  stories  of 
drunkards  and  criminals.  You  scarcely  sup- 
pose we  need  that  appeal.  We  are  different.'' 
Different  in  what!  In  your  clothes,  it  may  be; 
but  the  heart  may  be  as  vile  beneath  broadcloth 
as  beneath  rags.  In  your  education  and  in 
your  culture,  it  may  be;  but  what  is  education 
but  the  mere  clothes  of  the  mind,  and  culture 
but  the  mere  clothes  of  your  social  position? 
Dare  you  say  you  are  not  a  sinner?  Dare  you 
say  you  do  not  need  a  Saviour?  Dare  you  say 
that  Jesus  is  nothing  to  you  because  He  has 
nothing  to  give  you  that  you  have  not  got? 
You  know  better.  We  all  know  that  we  have 
needs,  and  although  we  may  not  be  sunk  in  the 
mire  of  vice,  yet  our  hearts  may  be  corrupt  with 
selfishness.  Tell  me  one  thing:  are  you  the 
man  you  want  to  be?  Are  you  the  woman  you 
once  dreamed  you  would  be?  Have  you  reached 
and  become  the  best  that  you  yourself  have  con- 
ceived and  desired  in  the  best  moments  of  your 
life?    If  you  have  not,  you  need  Jesus.    Man 


196       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

of  education,  man  of  culture,  man  of  wealth  as 
you  may  be,  you  need  Jesus  quite  as  much  as 
the  poor  sinner  in  the  outer  darkness  there. 
Shall  we  not  even  now,  with  the  vision  of  the 
redeeming  Christ  before  us,  seek  with  Him  to 
triumph  over  sin,  self,  and  death?  You  have 
had  your  visions  of  Jesus  many  times.  You 
have  had  them  here,  this  week,  it  may  be.  Now 
may  the  vision  become  so  clear  that  you  can 
resist  it  no  longer — the  vision  of  Jesus  coming 
to  you,  even  you,  and  saying, ''  Follow  Me.'' 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE 
{Plymouth  Churchy  Sunday  Morning^  November  20th.) 

THE  subject  this  morning  is  '^  Sons  of 
the  Tabernacle,"  and  the  passage  I 
have  chosen  for  my  text  is  Exodus 
xxxiii.  11:  ^^  Moses  returned  again  into  the 
camp,  but  his  servant  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun,  a 
young  man,  departed  not  out  of  the  Taber- 
nacle. ' ' 

There  is  something  very  beautiful  and  signif- 
icant about  the  relations  which  existed  between 
Joshua  and  Moses.  It  is  the  contact  of  ma- 
turity with  youth,  of  the  master  with  the 
scholar ;  and  it  suggests  to  us  that  deep,  natural 
order  which  insures  that  the  young  should  ever- 
more step  into  the  places  of  the  aged  and  carry 
on  the  progress  of  the  world.  Ibsen,  in  one  of 
his  memorable  plays,  ^^  The  Master  Builder,'' 
represents  the  master  builder  as  oppressed  by 
a  strange  fear.  He  hears  the  young  knocking 
at  the  door,  and  he  fears  that  the  young  wrll 
enter  in  and  dispossess  him.  Such  a  fear  as 
this  is  impossible  to  the  wise  and  magnanimous 
man.     The  wise  and  magnanimous  man  has 

197 


198       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

learned  long  ago  the  truth  that  the  necessary 
man  does  not  exist,  and  that  all  the  work  we  do 
is  incomplete  in  itself ;  it  is  but  an  instalment  in 
the  plan  of  universal  progress.  The  truly  great 
and  magnanimous  man  does  what  Moses  did. 
He  attaches  young  men  to  him  and  teaches  them 
his  methods  and  cheerfully  anticipates  the  hour 
when  they  will  take  up  the  work  which  falls  un- 
finished from  his  hands.  And  the  youth  who  is 
magnanimous  and  noble-hearted  will  rejoice  to 
be  the  humble  pupil  of  the  man  who  is  fit  to 
instruct  him.  He  will  learn  to  serve,  that  here- 
after he  may  be  fit  to  rule.  That  is  the  alto- 
gether beautiful  and  noble  relation  between 
Moses  and  Joshua.  As  Moses  passed  with 
shining  face  into  the  camp  and  the  worshipping 
people  watched  with  awe  the  splendid  and  ma- 
jestic figure,  Joshua,  a  young  man,  remains  be- 
hind in  the  Tabernacle  of  his  God,  there  seeking 
for  the  grace  and  purification  that  shall  fit  him 
to  take  up  the  work  which  Moses  has  relin- 
quished. 

But  the  scene  has  a  deeper  significance.  It 
is  not  merely  the  dramatic  association  of  old 
and  young  that  interests  us — the  old  man  end- 
ing and  the  young  man  beginning  his  career — 
what  we  need  to  see  is  that  the  bond  which  is 
common  to  them  is  the  great  bond  of  a  religious 
ideal. .  Moses  is  fresh  from  the  vision  of  God; 
Joshua  is  seeking  it.    To  many  a  man  in  that 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE      199 

great  crowd  of  promiscuous  Hebrew  fugitives 
the  thought  of  God  was  as  yet  a  formless 
thought  and  religion  was  an  empty  phrase. 
Notwithstanding  the  miraculous  deliverance 
from  Egypt,  the  splendours  of  Sinai,  the  awful- 
ness  and  the  loneliness  of  the  desert,  they  still 
had  but  an  elementary  sense  of  God  and 
religion.  They  still  yearned  for  the  easy  life 
of  Egypt.  They  loved  bondage  more  than 
liberty,  ''  bondage  with  ease  than  strenuous 
liberty. '^  They  obeyed  the  law  of  Moses  in 
pure  terror,  but  no  sooner  was  the  great  law- 
giver passed  into  the  clouds  than  the  bond  of 
restraint  was  snapped  and  they  cried  out, 
' '  Make  us  gods  that  shall  go  before  us ;  for  as 
for  Moses,  the  man  that  brought  us  out  of  the 
land  of  Egypt,  we  know  not  what  has  become  of 
him."  But  Joshua  was  not  one  of  these.  He, 
more  than  any  other  man  in  that  vast  camp, 
responded  to  the  spiritual  passion  of  Moses. 
He  felt  God  in  every  fibre  of  his  young  in- 
nocence. Religion  for  him,  as  for  Moses,  was 
the  greatest  thing  in  the  world  and  the  only  en- 
during thing.  And  here,  then,  lies  the  signif- 
icance of  this  story  for  us  to-day. 

I  propose  to  you  a  large  question,  viz..  Does 
the  Church  answer  any  real  need  in  human 
nature?  Does  it  fulfil  any  needful  function  in 
human  life?  Can  we  justify  its  existence?  I 
need  not  remind  you  that  there  are  many  voices 


200       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

which  answer  each  one  of  these  questions  with 
a  negative.  The  Church  is  regarded  by  some 
men  as  an  effete  institution;  by  others  as  an 
expensive  anomaly,  and  by  many  more  as  a 
negligible  factor  in  human  life.  ^  ^  For  myself, ' ' 
says  one  of  the  more  outspoken  antagonists  of 
religion,  ^ '  I  never  pray.  I  never  feel  the  need 
of  prayer.  The  habit  of  prayer  tends  to 
weaken  character. '^  And  the  same  writer, 
speaking  yet  more  bitterly,  goes  on  to  denounce 
what  he  calls  ''  the  mockery  of  Divine  services 
in  the  midst  of  untaught  ignorance,  unchecked 
roguery,  unbridled  vice  " — as  though  the  ig- 
norance and  the  roguery  and  vice  were  directly 
caused  by  the  habit  of  worship.  The  same 
writer  then  proceeds  to  denounce  the  very  word 
**  holiness."  He  declares  the  word  to  be  ob- 
noxious and  offensive,  and  the  Church  the  home 
of  cant  and  rant  and  fustian.  Such  is  the  way 
in  which  the  more  outspoken  antagonists  of 
religion  regard  the  Church  to-day,  and  there 
are  thousands  more  who,  while  shrinking  from 
this  extreme  violence  of  language,  doubtless  in 
their  hearts  are  inclined  to  believe  that  a  young 
man  in  the  tabernacle  presents  a  spectacle  for 
irony  and  ridicule.  Well,  does  he  ?  Let  us  try 
to  see  what  the  Tabernacle  did  for  Joshua ;  and 
through  the  lessons  of  this  ancient  story  let  us 
try  to  grasp  what  is  the  true  function  of  the 
Church  in  our  modern  life. 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE      201 

Now,  as  I  read  the  story  of  Josliua,  and  try 
to  estimate  his  character,  I  find  three  notes  in 
it :  there  is  the  spirit  of  devoutness,  the  spirit  of 
restraint,  and  the  spirit  of  heroism;  and  the 
root  of  each  is  religion.  These  were  the  fruits 
of  the  Tabernacle,  and  they  were  worthy  fruits ; 
and  I  claim,  therefore,  for  the  Church  of  Jesus 
Christ,  that  it  does  directly  minister  to  the 
spirit  of  devoutness,  the  spirit  of  restraint,  and 
the  spirit  of  heroism. 

First,  for  a  moment,  let  us  consider  the  spirit 
of  devoutness  and  what  it  means.  Joshua  is  a 
young  man,  and  he  departs  not  out  of  the 
Tabernacle.  Does  not  that  mean  that  he  was 
sedulous  to  keep  the  freshness  of  his  young 
devoutness!  For  is  it  not  true  that  we  all  be- 
gin life  with  a  certain  dower  of  devoutness,  a 
certain  aptitude  for  reverence  and  goodness? 
The  child  is  always  devout.  In  the  child's  mind 
the  very  wonder  of  the  world  works  the  spirit 
of  reverence.  To  the  child  prayer,  God,  and 
heaven,  are  natural  and  credible  conceptions. 
Thus  Wordsworth  speaks  of  the  child  having  in 
his  heart  ' '  the  murmur  of  the  sea  that  brought 
him  hither,''  of  standing  in  the  fresh  light 
'^  that  never  was  on  land  or  sea,"  a  light  which 
all  too  early  fades  into  ^'  the  light  of  common 
day."  And  what  is  it  that  most  quickly  and 
fatally  destroys  this  first,  fine,  fresh  devoutness 
of  the  mind?    It  is  the  cynicism  which  in  this 


202        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

age  more  than  any  other  is  the  ruin  and  corrup- 
tion of  youth.  And  who  does  not  know  how  it 
happens?  A  word  whispered  in  the  ear,  the 
light,  bitter  talk  which  cheapens  all  good  and 
gracious  acts,  the  imputation  of  dishonest  mo- 
tives to  honest  men,  the  scorn  of  that  which  is 
serious  and  the  ridicule  of  that  which  is  high, 
until  presently  the  bloom  is  rubbed  away  from 
life,  and  laughter  itself  has  a  bitter  ring  in  it, 
and  a  youth  knows  the  price  of  everything  but 
the  value  of  nothing,  and  least  of  all  the  value  of 
the  most  valuable  things  in  the  world,  such  as 
innocence  and  the  simple  mind,  and  the  truthful 
tongue  and  the  incorrupt  heart.  And  then, 
when  the  devout  spirit  disappears,  the  general 
scheme  of  conduct  begins  to  be  lowered,  and  the 
youth  begins  to  slide  down  and  down  into  a  kind 
of  life  where  purity  and  honour  perish,  until  at 
last  in  some  bitter  hour  he  hears  the  cry  of  self- 
revelation — 

"  We  have  done  with  iiope  and  honour, 
We  are  lost  to  love  and  truth ; 
We  are  dvoppiu^  down  the  ladder  rung  by  rung, 
And  the  measure  of  our  torment  is  the  measure  of  our 
youth. 
God  help  us  1  for  we  knew  the  worst  too  young." 

That  is  the  final  fruit  of  cynicism  and  the  lack 
of  a  devout  mind.  ^'  Keep  innocence  and  do 
the  thing  that  is  right ;  so  shalt  thou  be  brought 
to  thy  latter  end  in  peace, ' '  is  one  of  the  golden 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE      203 

sentences  of  the  Apocrypha,  and  some  of  you 
will  recall  the  effect  with  which  that  sentence  is 
put  by  a  modern  novelist  into  the  mouth  of  a 
man  who  has  committed  a  great  crime,  and  in 
the  very  height  of  his  fame  discovers  that  his 
sin  has  found  him  out.  What  Joshua  did  was 
to  keep  innocence  and  the  devout  spirit.  He 
knew  its  value ;  he  knew  that  without  it  he  was  a 
ruined  man.  ^'  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun,  a 
young  man,  departed  not  out  of  the  Tab- 
ernacle.'^ 

My  brothers,  I  have  come  to  a  point  of  life 
now  when  some  retrospect  is  possible.  I  can 
say,  of  many  phases  of  life,  the  experiment  is 
ended;  I  can  see  the  conclusion  of  the  whole 
matter.  I  have  had  manifold  opportunities,  far 
more  than  fall  to  most  men,  of  studying  the  life 
of  young  men,  especially  in  great  cities ;  and  of 
all  the  conclusions  graven  most  deeply  on  my 
mind  I  think  the  deepest  is  this :  the  beginning 
of  ruin  is  the  loss  of  devoutness.  I  am  not  now 
speaking  of  irreverence  of  tongue  or  thought 
only;  I  am  speaking  of  something  far  more 
subtle — the  departure  from  the  heart  of  that 
gracious  habit  of  spiritual  thought  which  we 
call  devoutness,  and  my  experience  goes  to 
prove  that  devoutness  of  temper  cannot  be 
maintained  without  those  means  of  grace  which 
the  Church  provides.  I  know  in  my  own  heart 
how  soon  the  spirit  of  devoutness  fades  when 


204       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

from  any  cause  I  am  deprived  of  public  worship 
for  any  length  of  time ;  and  when  I  see  a  youth, 
to  whom  religious  worship  has  been  the  atmos- 
phere of  childhood,  gradually  withdrawing  him- 
self from  the  means  of  grace,  I  tremble  for  him. 
I  tremble  for  him  because  I  have  seen  what  it 
means.  I  have  seen  the  light  of  aspiration 
dying  out  of  young  eyes,  as  the  sunshine  dies 
from  a  cloud,  leaving  only  gloom.  I  have 
watched  character  and  all  the  finer  part  of  a 
man  deteriorate.  I  have  known  rich  men  whose 
spiritual  decay  has  been  in  the  ratio  of  their 
worldly  success,  and  at  this  hour  I  can  think  of 
men  whom  I  loved,  who  once  came  with  me  to 
the  house  of  God  to  keep  Holy  Day,  who  now  lie 
in  jail  and  the  penitentiary,  who  are  dying  in 
charity  wards  of  hospitals,  who  are  rotting  and 
starving  in  the  streets,  and  all  their  misery  be- 
gan when  they  forsook  the  Tabernacle  of  their 
God.  Consider  it!  Joshua,  strong  man  as  he 
was,  knew  where  the  strength  of  his  life  lay. 
It  was  in  the  temper  of  devoutness.  He  knew 
that  he  must  grow  a  soul  before  he  could  live  a 
great  life  and  achieve  a  great  career,  and  hence 
he  ^^  went  not  out  of  the  Tabernacle.'* 

Growing  a  soul !  Yes,  that  is  what  the  spirit 
of  devoutness  does  for  us,  and  I  ask  you 
whether  that  is  not  something  worth  doing,  and 
something  that  is  essential  to  the  highest  use  of 
life?    ''  Ah,'*  men  say,  the  men  to  whom  the 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE     205 

word  *^  holiness  "  is  offensive,  ^'  we  are  not 
conscious  of  a  soul,  and  we  can  get  on  very  well 
without  one. ' '  So  men  used  to  say  of  the  slave 
— that  he  did  not  want  liberty  and  was  quite 
happy  without  it — but  that  was  only  because  he 
was  a  slave.  The  moment  you  gave  him  liberty 
the  slave  found  he  did  want  it,  and  had  always 
been  wanting  it,  though  he  did  not  know  it.  It 
avails  nothing  to  say  you  can  get  on  without  a 
soul.  The  question  is,  how  much  better  could 
you  get  on  with  one?  how  much  more  of  the 
height  and  breadth  of  life  could  you  touch  if 
your  spiritual  nature  were  developed  as  well  as 
your  intellectual  nature?  Therefore  Joshua 
set  himself  to  grow  a  soul.  He  found  the  soil, 
the  temperature,  the  atmosphere  for  soul- 
growth  in  the  Tabernacle  of  God.  He  had  a 
great  work  to  do  as  a  builder  of  a  nation,  and 
knew  the  truth,  which  Mrs.  Browning  once  ex- 
pressed in  pregnant  phrase — 

"It  takes  a  soul 
To  move  a  body ;  it  takes  a  high-souled  man 
To  move  the  masses  even  to  a  cleaner  stye." 

And  I  say  without  fear  of  contradiction,  that 
the  great  claim  of  the  Church  upon  the  world 
is  that  it  has  grown  souls  in  men,  and  that  these 
are  the  men  who  have  done  the  most  to  uplift 
humanity.  If  that  claim  be  true,  who  is  there 
that  will  dare  to  speak  of  the  Church  as  an 


206       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

effete  institution  or  as  a  negligible  factor  in 
the  social  evolution  of  mankind ! 

Then  there  is  the  second  note:  the  spirit  of 
restraint.  Man  is  by  nature  the  least  rational 
of  animals.  He  is  intemperate,  incontinent,  ex- 
travagant, and  therefore  he  needs  what  no 
other  creature  needs:  moral  restraint.  He 
needs  curbs  and  checks.  He  needs  something 
he  can  fear ;  something  he  can  obey ;  something 
higher  than  his  own  will;  and  where  is  he  to 
find  this  restraint?  It  is  found  in  the  tremen- 
dous conception  of  man's  personal  responsi- 
bility to  God ;  and  the  Church  exists  to  enforce 
that  conception.  In  the  Tabernacle  you  meet 
your  Maker.  Here  the  law  of  heaven  is  re- 
vealed. It  is  the  sacred  shrine  of  pledge  and 
vow,  the  awful  vestibule  of  the  Eternal. 
Joshua  knew  that.  He  knew  that  he  needed 
some  force  of  restraint  upon  his  life,  and  we 
need  it  too.  Where  can  we  find  that  spirit  of 
restraint  so  well  as  in  those  solemnities  of 
reiterated  worship  which  confirm  us  in  alle- 
giance to  our  Maker  by  constantly  making  the 
sense  of  God  supreme  in  our  thoughts,  our  con- 
sciences, and  our  lives?  Men  need  the  spirit  of 
restraint,  I  say.  They  have  always  needed  it, 
and  hence  you  will  find  that  the  oldest  thing  in 
human  life  is  religion — the  bond  that  holds  man 
to  his  unseen  Creator  and  Judge.  Prayer  is 
older   than   parliaments;    worship   is   a   more 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE      207 

ancient  thing  than  commerce.  During  my  sum- 
mer holiday  this  year  I  was  much  in  lonely 
places  exploring  a  beautiful  and  solitary  dis- 
trict of  England.  I  found  little  or  nothing  to 
remind  me  of  the  past  commercial  life  of  man. 
I  found  a  great  deal  to  remind  me  of  his  past 
religious  life — the  Druid's  stone  on  the  wide 
moor,  the  grey  altar  of  ancient  sacrifice,  the 
broken  cross — all  eloquent  of  this  need  for  the 
spirit  of  restraint  in  human  life  which  man  has 
felt  in  all  ages.  What  men  have  needed 
through  the  centuries,  do  not  we  need?  Nay, 
may  I  not  ask,  is  not  the  most  perilous  feature 
of  this  age  in  which  we  live  its  lack  of  restraint? 
— its  extravagant  lust  of  pleasure ;  its  mad  race 
for  gold;  its  violent  and  intemperate  passions 
which  perpetually  overwhelm  men  and  nations 
in  ruin;  and  for  this  there  is  but  one  remedy: 
that  spirit  of  restraint  which  comes  into  our 
common  life  when  there  is  a  common  conception 
of  our  obligation  as  individuals  to  Almighty 
God.  Joshua  saw  that  if  he  was  to  escape  the 
spirit  of  license  which  was  the  ruin  of  his  peo- 
ple he  must  learn  to  live  as  ever  in  his  great 
Taskmaster's  eye.  That  was  why  he  was  in 
the  Tabernacle. 

I  have  spoken  in  these  addresses,  during  the 
past  week,  of  many  forms  of  sin.  There  is  one 
that  I  do  not  think  I  have  named,  yet  it  is  per- 
haps the  commonest  of  all.    It  is  the  sin  of 


\ 


208       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

waste — soul-waste.  Let  me  relate  an  incident, 
and  you  will  see  at  once  what  I  mean.  It 
happened  on  a  certain  day  that  Judas  looked 
upon  a  beautiful  act  of  love  and  devotion.  He 
saw  a  woman,  in  the  abandonment  of  her  ten- 
derness for  Christ,  take  a  box  of  ointment, 
which  was  very  precious,  and  break  it  over  the 
feet  of  Jesus.  And  Judas  said,  ^^  Why  this 
waste  ?  ' '  All  that  beautiful  piety  of  Mary  and 
all  her  love  were  to  this  man  so  much  mis- 
applied emotion.  And  later  on  Jesus  is  seated 
at  the  Last  Supper,  and  He  has  something  to 
say  to  Judas,  and  this  is  what  He  said :  ^ '  I  have 
kept  those  whom  Thou  hast  given  Me,  and  none 
of  them  is  lost  but  the  son  of  waste — the  son  of 
perdition,"  and  that  was  Judas.  Oh,  think  of 
the  infinite  irony  and  tragedy  of  the  words! 
This  man,  so  keen  in  his  business  instincts, 
thought  that  act  of  Mary's  pure  emotion  a  form 
of  waste,  and  he  himself  is  the  very  son  of 
waste,  whose  own  soul  is  wasted  away  for  the 
lack  of  that  very  emotion  which  Mary  had. 
Business  men,  look  into  your  own  hearts.  Tell 
me,  truthfully,  is  there  nothing  in  the  story 
which  makes  it  something  of  a  parable  and  a 
warning  for  you?  You  have  ceased  to  go  to 
church ;  you  have  your  Sunday  golf,  your  Sun- 
day dinner  parties ;  you  grudge  a  single  dollar 
given  to  Christ,  a  single  hour  given  to  public 
worship.     Oh,  do  you  not  see  that  your  own 


/ 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE      209 

souls  are  wasting  for  lack  of  religion!  It  is 
possible  that  for  some  of  you  there  is  an  in- 
herited instinct  of  morality  which  will  hold  you 
steadfast  in  right-doing  for  a  long  time  to 
come,  but  inherited  instinct  will  not  suffice 
for  your  children.  They  will  grow  up  with 
dwarfed  souls,  with  spiritual  instincts  wholly 
undeveloped,  and  the  day  may  come  when  their 
shame  will  break  your  heart.  And  even  in  your- 
self the  symptoms  of  a  wasted  soul  will  grow 
more  manifest  with  time.  Look  back  through 
the  years  and  compare  yourself  to-daj^  with 
what  you  were  twenty  years  ago,  when  you  went 
to  church.  Have  you  not  cause  to  say :  ^ '  It  was 
better  with  me  then  than  it  is  now  "?  for  you 
are  richer  in  sordid  wealth  but  poorer  in  all 
else,  and  you  know  it.  It  may  be  that  Christ 
will  have  to  say  to  you  poor  rich  men  what  He 
said  about  Judas:  ^^  Thou  hast  wasted  thyself, 
and  what  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the 
whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul !  ' ' 

And  then  we  see  that  religion  was  for  Joshua 
an  impulse  to  heroism,  and  this  truth  lifts  the 
whole  matter  into  a  national  question.  I  need 
not  remind  you  that  there  have  been  periods  in 
the  history  of  my  own  country  when  heroism  has 
been  called  for,  and  when  that  flame  of  heroism 
has  been  kindled  at  the  altar  of  the  Lord ;  it  is  a 
thing  that  has  happened  again  and  again.  In 
spite  of  all  that  may  be  said,  and  much  that  may 


210       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

be  said  justly,  about  the  imperfections  of 
religious  men,  I  nevertheless  believe  that,  tak- 
ing man  for  man,  you  will  find  a  higher  type  of 
character  in  the  Church  of  Christ  than  any- 
where else.  Carlyle  thought  so — and  he  was 
not  a  soft-hearted  or  lenient  critic — when  at 
the  end  of  his  life  he  says  that  the  best  of  the 
religious  people  he  had  known  were  the  best 
people  he  had  known  anywhere,  and  that  is  the 
justification  of  the  Church.  It  is  not  in  vain 
that  Joshua  goes  into  the  temple.  It  is  not  rant 
and  cant  and  fustian  that  is  found  there ;  oh,  no, 
it  is  those  serious  thoughts  which  give  gravity 
to  character  and  those  profound  truths  which 
impose  restraint  on  conduct,  and  finally,  those 
Divine  principles  which  produce  heroism  and 
equip  men  for  the  highest  service  of  their  race. 
And  now  I  put  it  to  you,  and  I  put  it  es- 
pecially to  the  great  crowd  of  young  men  here 
this  morning,  whether  it  is  not  after  all  a  fine 
thing  that  is  said  about  Joshua :  ^  ^  A  young  man 
who  departed  not  from  the  tabernacle  "I  I  put 
it  to  you  whether  that  is  a  cause  for  ridicule  or 
praise  1  I  put  it  to  you  whether  it  is  not  a  more 
admirable  trait  in  a  young  man's  character  that 
he  should  nurture  his  mind  in  the  serious 
thoughts  of  the  sanctuary  than  that  he  should 
care  for  nothing  in  life  above  the  banalities  of 
the  music-hall,  or  the  odds  upon  a  race,  or  the 
passion  for   sport,   or  the   sordid  pursuit  of 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE      211 

wealth?  For  my  part  I  think  we  have  no  rea- 
son to  be  ashamed  of  the  sons  of  the  tabernacle. 
I  never  see  a  little  grey  conventicle  upon  the  hill- 
side in  my  own  country  without  a  vivid  sense  of 
all  that  it  has  done  for  the  people :  for  it  is  from 
these  humble  doors  of  the  conventicle,  the  meet- 
ing-house, the  chapel,  in  little  places,  that  many 
a  hero  has  come  out  to  fight  the  good  fight  of 
liberty  and  righteousness  for  the  people.  And 
when  some  great  crisis  arises  and  some  great 
demand  is  made  upon  manhood,  it  will  be  still 
upon  the  tabernacle  that  the  nation  will  have  to 
depend  for  help.  The  sons  of  the  tabernacle! 
Why,  they  include  such  glorious  names  as  Glad- 
stone and  Gordon,  and  Wilberforce  and  Bux- 
ton, Sir  John  Lawrence  and  Havelock — to  quote 
only  a  few  out  of  England's  biography,  and  to 
say  nothing  of  your  own  great  crowd  of  men 
who  came  from  the  temple  of  the  Lord  to  serve 
and  deliver  the  nation. 

Is  there  not  enough  in  the  mere  mention  of 
such  names  to  make  us  understand  that  all 
that  is  most  memorable  in  history  and  human 
achievement  has  its  origin  in  religion?  There 
is  no  more  significant  putting  of  that  truth  than 
the  admirable  phrase  which  Lord  Eosebery  has 
applied  to  Cromwell.  He  says  that  Cromwell 
was  the  most  formidable  combination  of  human 
qualities  known  in  history,  because  he  was  a 
combination  of  the  religious  mystic  and  the  man 


212        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

of  action.  Sons  of  the  tabernacle !  That  is  too 
proud  and  too  sacred  a  distinction  to  be  dis- 
posed of  by  mere  irony  and  ridicule.  A  little 
while  ago  a  friend  of  mine  told  me  that  he  went 
into  a  church  which  had  one  tradition  and  only 
"^he.  It  was  in  the  pulpit  of  that  church  that 
a  great  preacher  breathed  his  last  breath  as  he 
was  preaching,  and  my  friend  thought  he  would 
like  to  see  the  church,  and  went  in.  He  sat 
there  in  an  empty  pew,  when  presently  he  was 
startled  by  the  sound  of  quiet  sobbing  and 
what  seemed  like  a  pleading  voice,  and  he  went 
down  the  aisle  almost  trembling,  to  discover 
whence  came  this  sound  that  thrilled  him.  He 
found  in  the  pulpit  a  youth  who  was  the  son  of 
the  man  who  had  died  in  the  pulpit.  He  had 
come  to  the  church  that  afternoon  by  a  singular 
accident,  that  he  might  stand  in  the  pulpit 
where  his  father  died,  and  there  he  was,  on  his 
knees,  sobbing  before  his  God  and  praying  for 
grace  that  he  might  follow  his  father's  God. 
You  have  no  memory  quite  as  poignant  as  that, 
it  may  be,  but  there  are  many  of  you  here  who 
have  fathers  who  have  passed  into  the  skies. 
You  know  well  what  made  your  father  the  man 
he  was  and  your  mother  the  woman  she  was :  it 
was  their  piety.  And  to  their  piety,  to  their 
sense  of  duty  and  reverence  for  God,  you  owe 
all  the  best  qualities  and  forces  found  in  your 
own  life  and  character  to-day.     Come  back  to 


SONS  OF  THE  TABERNACLE      213 

your  father's  God,  young  man.  Say:  ^'  My 
father's  God,  I  will  exalt  Him."  And  let  the 
God  of  your  father  be  your  God  too.  „^ 

My  mind  goes  back  to  the  little  town  of 
Nazareth,  which,  we  are  told,  was  noted  for  its 
wic*kedness,  and  there  grew  up  the  most  perfect 
of  all  lives.  We  know  nothing  of  that  life  for 
thirty  years,  but  the  whole  biography  of  Jesus 
for  thirty  years  is  to  be  found  in  a  single 
sentence-:  '^  He  went  into  the  synagogue  as  His 
custom  was.''  Jesus  also  was  a  Son  of  the 
Tabernacle.  It  is  the  tabernacle  which  ex- 
plains the  character  which  even  to  the  sceptic 
is  the  greatest  and  purest  character  the  world 
has  ever  known ;  and  if  Jesus  needed  to  go  into 
the  synagogue,  if  it  was  His  custom,  think  you, 
young  men,  living  amid  the  temptations  of  these 
great  cities,  you  can  keep  yourselves  pure  and 
make  yourselves  valiant  without  going  into  the 
temple  of  your  God? 

And  so,  if  I  may  hazard  one  last  suggestion 
to  you,  I  will  say  this :  If  you  are  coming  into 
the  Church,  bring  to  it  your  manliness,  not 
your  unmanliness.  The  Church  wants  your 
strength,  not  your  weakness.  Eeligion  may  be 
a  cheap  thing,  the  cheapest  thing  in  the  world, 
and  the  meanest  thing  in  the  world;  and 
religion  may  be  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world, 
and  the  noblest.  Therefore  bring  your  entire 
manhood  to  the  toil  of  religion,  for  religicin 


214       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

needs  it  all.  Give  yourself  wholly  to  the  Lord 
and  consecrate  yourself  unto  Him.  Say :  ^  ^  As 
for  me  and  my  house,  I  will  serve  the  Lord." 
May  God  give  us  grace  to  make  the  vow  here 
in  the  presence  of  God's  people,  and  may  the 
vow  made  this  day  in  Plymouth  Church  be  rati- 
fied in  heaven  when  we  gather  with  the  whole 
family  of  God  in  the  Church  of  the  firstborn. 


XI 

THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL 

{Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Sunday  Evening,  Noveni- 
her  20th.) 

MY  subject  is  '*  The  Seasons  of  the 
Soul,''  and  the  passages  on  which  I 
shall  base  my  address  are  these: 
*^  Yea,  the  stork  in  the  heaven  knoweth  her  ap- 
pointed times ;  and  the  turtle  and  the  crane  and 
the  swallow  observe  the  time  of  their  season  '' 
(Jer.  viii.  7).  '^  The  harvest  is  past,  the  sum- 
mer is  ended,  and  we  are  not  saved  ''  (Jer.  viii. 
20). 

What  is  the  thought  in  the  mind  of  Jeremiah 
expressed  in  these  two  passages!  At  first  it 
seems  disconnected,  but  as  you  examine  it  there 
is  a  very  clear  thread  of  thought  discernible. 
Jeremiah,  like  all  poets  and  prophets  of  the 
Hebrew  race,  is  a  close  observer  of  Nature,  and 
in  one  of  his  reveries  he  had  noticed  one  of  the 
most  astonishing  things  in  Nature — the  migra- 
tion of  the  birds.  I  also  have  seen  it — the  as- 
sembly of  vast  hosts  of  birds  in  the  autumn  of 
the  year,  as  by  some  mystic  signal;  their  or- 

21$ 


216       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

ganised  flight — for  there  is  not  the  least  doubt 
that  it  is  organised;  their  movement  in  ranks 
and  orders,  under  the  visible  direction  of 
winged  captains  and  guides;  and  then  the 
tremendous  journey  from  English  fields  to 
African  deserts,  poised  at  a  height  higher  than 
the  Himalayas,  and  moving  at  a  speed  beside 
which  our  most  extravagant  ideas  of  speed  are 
paltry.  That  is  the  sign  of  the  closing  summer, 
just  as  the  return  of  these  exiles  of  the  air  is 
the  sign  of  returning  spring.  Yea,  the  stork  in 
the  heaven  knoweth  her  appointed  times  and 
the  wise  swallow  observes  her  times,  for  they 
hear  the  whisper  of  their  Creator,  and  know  the 
time  of  their  visitation,  and  respond  to  it. 

But  not  so  man,  and  there  is  that  which  makes 
the  thoughts  of  Jeremiah  sad  and  bitter.  The 
summer  ends,  and  the  harvest  passes,  but  man 
wings  no  flight  to  the  sunny  climes  of  God. 
For  him  also  there  is  a  season  and  a  time,  but 
he  observes  it  not.  The  mystic  signals  of  God's 
will  are  despised,  and  then  it  is  that  the  late  and 
lingering  bird  is  caught  in  the  sudden  grip  of 
winter,  and  the  arrow  of  the  frost  pierces  the 
foolish  heart,  and  maims  the  wings  that  will  fly 
no  more.  The  harvest  is  past,  and  we  are 
not  saved.  The  soul  sits  in  frozen  silence,  and 
has  no  longer  strength  for  flight.  Man  does 
not  recognise  his  spiritual  season,  and  over  the 
autumn  fields  of  life  wails  the  low  moan  of  once 


THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL     217 

heedless  and  now  lost  souls,  ^'  The  summer  is 
ended,  the  harvest  is  past,  and  we  are  not 
saved/' 

Here,  then,  is  a  great  truth:  that  the  soul  of 
man  has  its  appointed  time  of  salvation,  just  as 
the  earth  has  its  seasons.  There  is  something 
seasonal  in  the  spiritual  experiences  of  men. 
Have  you  never  observed  it?  Have  you  never 
marked  in  yourselves  times  when  a  spring  wind 
seems  to  blow  through  the  heart,  and  all  within 
you  is  tender  and  softened  as  by  the  dew  of 
God,  and  times  when  there  is  dulness  in  your 
members,  and  all  your  inner  life  seems  con- 
gealed ? 

Have  we  not  had  a  sense  of  Divine  visitations 
and  withdrawals,  a  consciousness  of  Divine  in- 
fluences which  play  upon  us  and  permeate  us? 
In  the  very  phrases  of  Scriptures  so  much  is 
taught  us.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  the  wind  of  God 
breathing  over  the  soul,  the  soft  spring  wind 
at  which  the  earth  wakens  and  is  renewed,  the 
wind  that,  passing  through  us,  begets  fertility 
and  beauty.  There  are  few  of  us  that  do  not 
sometimes  feel  that  in  some  mysterious  way  our 
life  is  knit  up  with  the  life  of  the  earth.  We 
are  of  the  earth  earthy.  The  spring  gladdens 
us,  the  autumn  saddens  us.  There  seems  to  be 
an  actual  quickening  in  our  members  when  once 
more  the  sap  stirs  in  the  tree,  and  all  the  world 
is  growing  and  blowing.     There  seems  to  be  an 


218       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

actual  slowing  of  the  wheels  and  pulses  of  life 
as  the  year  runs  down,  and  an  imperious  arrest 
is  put  upon  the  life  of  the  earth.  This  poet- 
preacher  of  Jerusalem  would  also  remind  us 
that  we  are  also  of  the  heaven  heavenly.  Our 
life  is  also  knit  up  with  vast  spiritual  forces, 
which  from  time  to  time  thrill  and  throb 
through  us.  The  soul  has  its  seasons  as  the 
earth  has;  seasons  when  God  is  near,  when 
goodness  is  easy  and  alluring;  when  all  that  is 
good  in  us  is  drawn  out,  and  the  seeds  of  truth 
quicken  in  the  interstices  of  the  soul,  and  the 
green  blade  of  the  heavenly  sower  springs  up 
with  its  promise  of  a  hundred-fold  harvest. 
Have  you  not  known  such  seasons?  Have  you 
not  felt  and  caught  for  an  instant  the  radiance 
and  warmth  of  that  Sun  of  Righteousness  who 
is  the  centre  of  all  the  solar  system  of  the 
spirit  1 

The  soul  has  its  seasons,  its  appointed  times, 
and  about  them  there  are  three  things  to  be 
noticed. 

I.  You  cannot  command  them.    They  are 
given. 

II.  You  can  use  them. 

III.  You  can  miss  them. 

First  observe  the  fact — this  play  of  outside 
forces  upon  us,  as  little  to  be  commanded  as  the 
seasons.  Think  for  a  moment  of  your  bodies; 
are  there  not  outside  forces  here,  for  ever  play- 


THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL     219 

ing  on  usi  For  instance,  who  knows  by  what 
minute  vibrations  of  the  air  and  arrangements 
of  cause  and  effect  the  body  is  kept  in  health, 
the  nerves  are  exalted  or  depressed?  A  thou- 
sand forces  play  upon  us  every  instant.  We 
are  the  centres  of  a  vast  mesh  of  sensitiveness, 
and  the  slender  threads,  like  the  threads  of  a 
gossamer  web,  run  out  into  the  very  depth  of 
the  infinite.  The  astrologist's  thought  that 
there  are  sweet  influences  in  the  Pleiades  and 
that  the  stars  affect  us  was  not  wholly  a  vain 
thought.  Sounds,  thrilling  unsought  in  the 
porches  of  the  ear;  visions,  painted  for  an  in- 
stant on  the  retina  of  the  eye;  odours,  and 
fragrances,  and  flavours  all  affect  us;  and  not 
our  body  only,  but,  through  our  physical  senses, 
our  thought,  our  imagination,  our  mind,  our 
will.  If  we  are  thus  affected  by  the  earthly, 
is  it  foolish  to  suppose  that  we  are  equally 
affected  by  the  heavenly?  If  the  body,  placed 
in  this  mysterious  world,  responds  so  sen- 
sitively to  all  physical  influences,  is  there  not 
ample  justification  for  this  truth  that  the  soul 
also  has  its  seasons,  its  sense  of  God,  its  con- 
sciousness of  a  Divine  visitation,  and  of  a  mys- 
tic intimacy  with  the  Supreme  ? 

Think  of  it  again  from  another  point  of  view. 
There  is  a  thing  in  the  world  called  genius,  but 
no  man  has  ever  yet  told  us  what  it  is,  or  ever 
will.    All  that  men  have  succeeded  in  telling  us 


220       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

is  what  it  is  not.  They  have  told  us  that  it  is 
not  talent,  that  it  cannot  be  acquired,  that  it 
cannot  be  commanded.  It  is  not  found  in  many 
a  great  scholar  whose  name  is  the  pride  of  his 
university;  it  is  found  in  the  son  of  a  stable- 
keeper  in  Moorfield,  called  John  Keats.  It  is 
not  found  in  generations  of  bishops,  learned, 
eloquent,  and  scholarly;  it  is  found,  and  shines 
like  a  crown  of  flame  on  the  brow  of  a  youth 
called  George  Whitfield.  Those  who  have 
possessed  it  give  no  better  account  of  the  mat- 
ter; but  in  this  they  all  agree,  it  is  something, 
not  themselves,  which  is  literally  and  truly 
given  them.  Milton  knows  that  he  cannot  write 
poetry  till  the  right  hour  comes,  and  he  lies 
awake  at  night,  praying  for  the  visitation. 
George  Eliot,  utterly  dissimilar  from  Milton  at 
so  many  points,  yet  is  one  with  him  here;  she 
feels  that  her  writings  are  given  her,  that  she  is 
the  vehicle  of  some  higher  power,  that  she  is 
commanded  by  it,  but  does  not  command  it :  that 
she  must  needs  wait  for  the  visitation  without 
which  her  mind  is  but  an  empty  temple.  Now  I 
ask  you,  is  there  not  something  in  such  testi- 
monies as  these  which  is  very  remarkable  ?  Do 
they  not  all  agree  in  one  astounding  assertion, 
that  the  mind  of  a  great  thinker  never  does  its 
noblest  work,  never  touches  the  supreme  height 
we  call  genius,  except  when  it  is  visited  by  some 
higher  power,  and  that  then  its  message  is  not 


THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL     221 

born  in  its  own  depths,  and  of  its  own  will,  but  is 
literally  and  truly  given  it '? 

In  the  world  of  the  intellect  we  have  our  name 
for  this  astounding  phenomenon;  is  there  any 
corresponding  fact  and  corresponding  word  for 
it  in  the  spiritual  world?  Yes;  the  correspond- 
ing fact  is  the  Divine  visitation  of  God  which  all 
human  souls  may  feel,  and  the  name  for  it  is 
grace.  The  highest  thoughts,  the  truest  im- 
pulses of  soul,  come  to  us  unbidden.  What  is  it 
that  teaches  the  bird  to  know  the  hour  of  its 
migration  ?  You  cannot  tell  me.  You  can  give 
it  a  name  and  call  it  instinct,  just  as  you  call 
the  contact  of  the  mind  of  the  great  poet  with 
the  mind  of  the  universe,  genius,  and  its  product 
inspiration.  But  these  are  only  names.  The 
inexplicable  thing  is  this :  that  the  mind  which 
made  the  universe  does  utter  itself  to  the  bird 
of  the  air,  in  a  secret  prompting,  a  kind  of 
grace,  interposing  for  its  salvation. 

Think,  then,  of  whether  or  not  that  same 
grace  is  not  found  in  our  lives.  Have  not  we 
known  it,  that  thrill  of  soul,  that  mystic  quick- 
ening, that  sudden  gracious  sensitiveness, 
which  makes  us  aware  of  God?  We  cannot  ex- 
plain how  or  whence  it  came.  One  of  our  great 
writers,  Mark  Rutherford,  has  told  us  that  he 
once  saw  for  an  instant  a  woman's  face  in  the 
street,  so  full  of  peace  and  stillness  that  he  un- 
derstood in  that  moment  for  the  first  time  the 


222        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

truth  of  the  Incarnation  and  the  gift  of  the 
Holy  Ghost.  The  Incarnation  in  a  woman's 
face !  Even  so,  for  the  grace  and  revelation  of 
God  may  draw  near  to  ns  by  many  avennes  that 
seem  to  our  poor  knowledge  to  have  no  relation 
with  religion. 

The  vision  or  the  voice  may  have  come  to  you 
as  you  sat  in  the  counting-house  or  the  office,  as 
you  closed  a  book  that  had  interested  you,  as 
you  heard  a  strain  of  music  in  the  street,  as  you 
sat  alone  in  your  house  at  night,  as  you  looked 
on  the  sea  and  mountain  with  a  joy  in  the 
beauty  of  the  world,  or  as  you  faced  the  dark 
hour,  and  heard  the  weeping  in  the  chamber  of 
the  dead,  and  felt  that  your  life  was  falling 
round  you  in  ruin ;  but  it  was  always  something 
outside  yourself,  something  given.  A  moment 
ago  your  heart  was  cold  and  hard;  now  it  is 
warmed  and  softened.  It  is  as  though  the 
angels  had  been  with  you,  as  though  a  curtain 
had  been  lifted  and  you  saw  for  an  instant  an 
awful  and  consoling  vision.  Something  has 
thrilled  in  you,  some  secret,  sensitive  fibre,  that 
was  neither  of  the  mind  nor  body.  And  you 
have  been  mystically  gladdened,  purged,  helped, 
directed,  comforted.  By  what  name  do  you  call 
this  visitation?  God's  name  for  it  is  grace. 
The  grace  of  God  fills  the  world:  and  as  that 
truly  spiritual  and  noble  writer,  Eobert  Louis 
Stevenson,  has  put  it,  **  We  walk  upon  it,  we 


THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL     223 

breathe  it:  we  live  and  die  by  it;  it  makes  the 
nails  and  axles  of  the  universe."  It  flows  into 
a  man's  heart  silently,  it  opens  on  a  man's 
life  like  a  great  soundless  sunrise.  We  who 
thought  ourselves  alone  find  that  we  are  not 
alone.  God  is  working  on  our  souls  all  the 
time,  even  as  sun  and  wind  and  weather  are 
always  working  on  the  earth,  producing  the 
dear,  sweet  spring  and  the  time  of  ingathering 
and  harvest.  You  remember  how  Wordsworth 
asks  of  Nature — 

"  Think  you  mid  all  this  mighty  sum 
Of  things  for  ever  speaking, 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  come, 
But  we  must  still  be  seeking  ? " 

The  soul  puts  the  same  question  to  God,  and 
God's  answer  is:  '^  I  was  found  of  them  that 
sought  Me  not,  I  was  made  manifest  to  them 
that  asked  not  after  Me  ";  for  this  is  the  first 
lesson  of  grace:  you  cannot  command  it,  and 
yet  it  comes. 

That  is  the  first  fact,  then,  and  it  is  amply 
attested.  Now  notice  the  second  thing — the 
grace  of  God  visits  us,  that  we  may  use  the 
grace. 

The  stork  knoweth  her  appointed  times ;  and 
knowledge  means  action.  She  perceives  the 
mystic  signal,  and  instantly  obeys  it.  She 
gazes  into  the  measureless  void,  and  though  she 
sees  no  path  there,  she  knows  there  is  a  path, 


224       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

and  knows  that  God  has  called  her,  and  makes 
haste  to  spread  her  wings  for  flight. 

But  here  begins  the  tragedy  of  man;  though 
he  has  spiritual  intuitions  of  equal  certainty  he 
does  not  act  upon  them.  How  many  men  do  we 
meet  in  every  walk  of  life  who  seem  to  have 
great  powers  which  have  yielded  no  commen- 
surate result — the  men  of  whom  Oliver  Wen- 
dell Holmes  speaks  so  pathetically  as  those 
who  ^  ^  die  with  all  their  music  in  them  ' '  ?  Why 
is  it?  In  the  main  I  believe  it  to  be  for  want 
of  response  to  opportunity,  for  want  of  effort. 
Even  so:  what  thousands  of  men  do  receive 
God's  spiritual  vision,  God's  intimation  of 
grace,  but  they  are  too  timid,  too  careless,  to 
seize  the  vision  and  interpret  it.  It  came  once, 
twice,  thrice.  They  saw  it,  felt  it,  thrilled  to  it, 
and  said,  ^'  To-morrow  I  will  go  and  work  in 
the  vineyard."  But  God  does  not  deal  in  to- 
morrows :  His  word  is,  ^  ^  To-day  if  ye  will  hear 
My  voice  harden  not  your  hearts."  The  mes- 
sage is  imperative ;  it  has  no  future  tense,  it  is 
now  or  never.  There  were  many  men  who 
knew  Christ  in  the  flesh,  and  might  have  told  us 
much  about  Him  that  we  do  not  know,  so  many 
that  St.  John  says  that  he  supposes  even  the 
world  itself  could  not  contain  the  books  that 
might  have  been  written.  The  men  who  might 
have  written  them  died,  and  gave  no  sign. 
They  took  with  them  to  the  grave  all  those 


THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL     225 

gracious  unrecorded  words  of  Christ,  all  the 
memories  of  His  face,  His  voice,  His  deeds; 
and  how  much  poorer  is  the  world  to-day !  No, 
God  insists  on  promptitude  in  any  man  to  whom 
He  commits  His  message.  There  must  be  no 
debate,  no  delay,  no  hesitation.  Now  is  the 
accepted  time,  for  it  is  the  only  acceptable  time. 
Not  to  use  it,  not  to  profit  by  the  message,  is  as 
good  as  never  to  have  had  it.  For  what  is 
salvation?  It  is  the  appropriation  of  God's 
grace.  Is  there  any  man  who  has  not  some- 
thing to  be  saved  from  I  Is  there  any  man  who 
is  not  given  an  opportunity  of  being  saved? 
Surely  not.  The  man  most  completely  trained 
in  morality  and  virtue,  most  impeccable  in  con- 
duct and  lofty  thought,  has  something  to  be 
saved  from.  It  is  perhaps  vanity,  Pharisaism, 
selfishness,  some  bitter  harshness  of  temper, 
some  flaw  of  the  spirit;  or  it  may  be,  though 
no  one  knows  it  but  himself,  some  secret  ve- 
hemence of  fleshly  passion,  some  poisonous  cor- 
ruption of  his  thought,  some  pursuing  and 
mocking  demon  of  unclean  imagination.  Ask 
him  when  he  is  alone  if  there  is  nothing  he 
needs  to  be  saved  from!  And  if  he  knows  him- 
self he  will  reply,  ^'  Yes  indeed,  for  the  things 
I  would  not  do,  these  I  do;  and  the  things  I 
would,  these  I  do  not;  who  shall  deliver  me 
from  this  body  of  death!  "  And  as  for  the 
man  who  is  not  good,  not  virtuous,  not  upright. 


226       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

we  know  that  he  needs  saving,  and  so  does  he ; 
for  is  he  not  visibly  flying  from  the  troop  of 
devils  who  press  upon  his  heels  and  drive  him 
down  the  steep  place  into  the  sea  I  What,  then, 
is  salvation  for  these  men,  who  seem  to  stand  so 
far  apart,  and  yet  are  so  close  together  in  their 
innermost  experiences?  It  is  simply  the  ap- 
propriation of  God's  grace. 

^^  I  was  not  disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vi- 
sion,'' said  St.  Paul;  and  the  whole  science  of 
salvation  lies  in  that  sentence.  For,  think  of  it, 
how  easy  to  have  been  disobedient !  What  was 
there  in  all  that  happened  to  Paul  that  day  upon 
the  Damascus  road  that  might  not  have  been 
explained  away  by  a  little  ratiocination?  A 
voice,  a  shock,  a  flash  of  blinding  light — call  it 
sunstroke,  earthquake,  epilepsy — a  subtle  mind 
could  find  many  names  for  it.  But  subtle  as 
the  mind  of  Paul  was,  here  was  something 
which  he  well  knew  lay  outside  the  mind.  He 
knew  his  season.  No  force  of  argument  or 
casuistry  could  drive  him  from  the  obstinate 
conviction  that  Jesus  had  indeed  spoken  to  him 
from  the  heavens.  Grace  had  met  him,  and  he 
knew  it.  And  as  I  look  into  the  pages  of  human 
experience,  I  find  a  thousand  stories  to  cor- 
roborate Paul's  story.  A  young  girl  listens  to 
a  strange  preacher  in  a  Norwich  meeting-house, 
and  weeps,  she  scarce  knows  why;  grace  had 
met  her  that  day,  and  all  the  world  reveres  the 


THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL     227 

name  of  Elizabeth  Fry.  A  wild  seaman,  in  the 
depth  of  his  sin,  hears  the  appealing  voice  of 
Jesus;  his  name  is  John  Newton,  and  it  is  he 
who  writes  the  sweetest  hymn  upon  the  grace  of 
God  the  world  possesses.  And  the  secret  in 
each  case  is  the  same ;  grace  met  Saul  of  Tarsus, 
and  Elizabeth  Fry,  and  John  Newton,  but  each 
appropriated  the  grace.  They  were  not  dis- 
obedient— they  knew,  and  what  is  more,  they 
observed  their  season. 

The  stork  knoweth  her  seasons  and  observes 
them.  There  is  a  Divine  grace  for  the  birds  of 
the  air,  the  call  of  instinct  which  makes  for 
salvation.  Man  also  has  the  call  of  grace,  and 
salvation  is  the  response  to  the  call,  the  ap- 
propriation of  the  Divine  grace. 

'^  Oh,"  but  you  say,  ''  what  about  the  man 
who  never  gets  the  call,  never  gets  a  chance?  " 
My  brothers,  I  have  heard  of  that  man  many 
times,  but  I  have  never  met  him.  Is  God  more 
careful  of  the  birds  of  the  air  than  of  man? 
''  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  ye  are  of  more  value 
than  many  sparrows,''  says  Jesus.  All  men 
share  God's  sunshine,  and  all  men  are  sharers 
also  of  God's  grace.  Mean  and  vile  as  the 
worst  may  be,  there  are  nevertheless  moments, 
hours,  seasons  of  visitation  even  for  him; 
promptings  of  tenderness,  and  purity,  and 
magnanimity,  a  gracious  touch  that  softens  the 
hard  heart  and  subdues  the  cruel  temper,  a 


228        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

voice  prompting  him  to  flee  from  the  wrath  to 
come  and  seek  the  far-off  realms  of  heavenly- 
sunlight. 

And  so  I  say  boldly  I  have  not  yet  met  the 
man  who  has  had  no  chance  of  redemption.  I 
say  that  if  a  man,  the  saddest  and  most  miser- 
able of  human  wrecks,  should  come  to  me  and 
say,  **  Sir,  I  never  had  a  chance,''  I  for  one 
should  not  believe  him.  Never  had  a  chance, 
sir?  Was  there  no  morning  when  you  woke 
after  some  night  of  sin  and  longed  to  be  an 
innocent  child  again,  and  was  not  that  a  chance  ? 
Has  no  one  in  all  your  long  descent  to  ruin  put 
out  a  hand  to  you,  and  trusted  you,  and  was 
not  that  a  chance  I  In  that  hour  when  you  hung 
yonder  on  the  rail  of  the  ferry-boat,  and  looked 
on  the  black  water,  and  gathered  yourself  to- 
gether for  the  final  leap  into  oblivion,  did  not 
some  mystic  hand  arrest  you,  and  was  not  that 
a  chance?  Were  you  never  ill,  and  did  you 
not  get  well  again,  have  you  never  once  felt 
your  soul  softened,  your  mind  awed,  your  heart 
touched  by  a  desire  for  goodness?  You  have 
not  had  a  chance?  Sir,  it  is  not  true.  You 
have  had  many  chances.  Yes,  and  let  me  add, 
you  have  one  more  even  now,  for  even  now 
Christ  is  looking  into  your  eyes,  and  calling 
you,  and  this  is  the  day  of  salvation. 

And  so  we  come  to  the  most  tragic  truth  of 
all — we  may  miss  the  season  of  God's  grace. 


THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL     229 

Picture  to  yourself  what  would  happen  to  the 
bird  if  it  missed  the  appointed  hour  of  its  mi- 
gration. Yonder  soars  the  winged  army,  and 
the  air  is  full  of  imperious  call  and  summons. 
It  wheels  and  lingers  in  the  sunset,  but  this  one 
foolish  creature  still  hangs  back.  Then  at  last 
the  great  host  begins  to  move  southwards,  and 
silence  falls  upon  empty  fields.  The  sun  shines 
next  day,  but  with  diminished  beam,  and  this 
foolish  creature  is  not  afraid.  And  then  some 
night  the  autumn  storm  bursts  upon  the  reaped 
fields,  and  after  that  comes  the  stringent  frost, 
and  then  the  deep  snow,  and  the  shepherd  on 
the  hills  finds  in  the  snow  a  little  dead  bird, 
starved  and  frozen — it  has  missed  the  hour  of 
its  migration.  Can  we  doubt  that  that  is  also 
a  picture  of  things  in  human  life?  Why,  we 
have  seen  dynasties  overthrown  and  the  des- 
tiny of  nations  altered  by  a  single  hour's  de- 
lay in  some  great  crisis.  We  have  seen  in 
our  streets  the  forlorn  descendants  of  kings, 
kings  who  have  missed  their  hour,  and  knew 
not  the  day  of  their  visitation.  We  see  men 
every  day  missing  great  opportunities,  op- 
portunities clear  enough  to  all  but  themselves, 
which  they  do  not  perceive  through  indolence, 
or  inattention,  or  mere  carelessness.  If  they 
see  at  all,  they  see  only  when  the  hour  is  past. 
Can  we  hide  from  ourselves  the  truth  that  in 
the  same  way  men  do  miss  the  seasons  of  God's 


230       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

grace?  Is  it  not  possible  to  resist  the  Spirit, 
to  repulse  the  heavenly  Prompter,  to  dismiss 
the  warning  impulse?  I  am  not  applying  the 
narrow  arithmetic  of  sectarian  theology  to 
men's  chances  of  salvation.  I  decline  to  specu- 
late on  human  futures.  I  do  not  know  how 
far  the  magnanimity  of  God  may  go;  I  only 
know  that  His  thoughts  are  as  high  above  our 
thoughts  as  the  heavens  are  high  above  the 
earth.  I  cannot  imagine  any  man,  translated 
into  the  realm  of  the  eternities,  whose  very  con- 
ception implies  limitlessness,  quite  coming  to 
his  last  chance;  nor  can  I  pierce  the  hereafter 
to  know  where  that  last  chance  is  set,  even  if 
there  be  such  an  awful  hour  of  finality.  But 
this  I  know,  that  here,  and  within  the  limits  of 
this  world,  we  do  see  men  miss  their  last 
chances.  We  do  see  them  refuse  the  grace  of 
God,  and  count  themselves  unworthy  of  eternal 
life.  They  live,  they  die,  and  from  first  to  last 
they  have  never  appropriated  the  grace  of  God ; 
they  have  refused  the  toils  of  the  Spirit,  and 
have  let  their  hearts  run  to  waste ;  and  the  sea- 
sons of  God  visit  them  in  vain. 

Oh,  my  brothers,  I  implore  you  to  think  of 
these  things.  I  speak  with  twenty-five  years  of 
public  ministry  behind  me.  I  have  seen  mar- 
vellous conversions,  and  I  have  seen  also  many 
lives  go  down,  their  bright  promise  extin- 
guished, their  early  hopes  dimmed,  not  only  by 


THE  SEASONS  OF  THE  SOUL     231 

the  tragedy  of  vice,  but  by  the  far  commoner 
tragedy  of  neglected  good.  It  fills  me  with  a 
kind  of  terror  to  think  of  the  thousands  upon 
thousands  I  have  addressed,  and  to  remember 
how  few  have  given  me  any  outward  sign  that 
the  truth  I  have  spoken  was  indeed  the  truth 
to  them.  And  therefore  my  last  appeal  to  you 
is  for  some  definite  open  sign  that  you  accept 
the  call  of  God.  I  appeal  to  you  for  instant 
decision.  Don't  wait,  don't  doubt,  don't  linger. 
Observe  the  season,  and  settle  things  with  God 
now.  And  I  plead  with  you  to  do  this,  lest  for 
you  the  hour  should  come  (which  God  forbid) 
when  you  will  wake  from  your  dream  of  folly 
to  utter  this  bitterest  of  all  cries :  ' '  Behold, 
the  harvest  is  past,  the  summer  is  ended,  and  I 
am  not  saved. ' ' 


xn 

SELF-RESERVATION 

(Yale  University,  Sunday  Morning,  November  Uh.) 

*'  Take  heed  to  thyself  that  thou  offer  not  thy  burnt  offer- 
ings in  every  place  thou  seest." — Deut.  xii.  13. 

THIS  is  a  strange  counsel,  and  we  can 
judge  its  intention  rightly  by  allowing 
the  imagination  to  reconstruct  the  pic- 
ture of  the  circumstances  under  which  it  was 
uttered.  The  Israelites  are  about  to  enter  on 
the  land  which  God  has  given  them,  and  it  is 
easy  to  understand  the  solemn  jubilation  of 
their  temper.  What  can  be  more  natural  than 
that  they  should  be  eager  to  offer  their  burnt 
offerings  on  every  altar  that  they  see!  Here 
at  the  roadside,  on  the  mountain  path,  wherever 
they  turn,  are  the  shrines  and  altars  ready  for 
them,  as  in  Catholic  countries  one  sees  the 
shrine  and  the  Cross  at  every  turn  of  the  road. 
Is  it  not  the  evidence  of  a  devout  spirit  that 
the  host  shall  halt  at  these  wayside  altars,  and 
seize  the  opportunity  of  sacrificing  to  God! 
The  reply  of  Moses  is  that  such  sacrifices  are 
not  so  much  an  evidence  of  devoutness  as  of 

232 


SELF-KESERVATION  233 

shallowness  of  spiritual  feeling.  The  impulse 
that  governs  them  is  too  easily  stirred  to  be 
deeply  reverential;  there  is  a  facile  formality 
about  it  which  savours  of  the  old  idolatry.  One 
can  fancy  something  of  light-hearted  and  frivo- 
lous feeling  in  these  chance  sacrifices;  as  if  a 
man  should  say,  *'  Lo,  here  is  an  altar — let  us 
sacrifice/'  with  no  shrinking  sense  of  the  near- 
ness of  God,  and  of  the  unspeakable  awfulness 
of  Him  whom  the  heaven  of  heavens  cannot  con- 
tain. Sacrifice  to  God — the  earthly  function  by 
which  the  soul  draws  near  to  its  Maker — is  so 
solemn  a  thing  that  it  is  only  to  be  attempted  at 
solemn  moments  and  in  a  solemn  spirit,  and 
hence  the  counsel,  ^'  Take  heed  to  thyself  that 
thou  offer  not  thy  burnt  offerings  in  every  place 
thou  seest,''  is  a  counsel  which  implies  a  real 
and  deep  spiritual  preparation  for  spiritual 
acts — a  doctrine  of  self-reservation  and  self- 
reticence  in  the  presence  of  the  Eternal. 

It  means  also  another  thing:  God's  jealousy 
of  idolatry.  In  the  old  Talmudic  stories  of 
Abram  there  is  one  that  is  deeply  significant  of 
man's  innate  tendency  to  idolatry.  Abram,  who 
has  declared  to  Nimrod  that  he  cannot  worship 
fire,  because  it  can  be  quenched  by  water,  nor 
water,  because  it  can  be  driven  away  in  the  form 
of  clouds  by  the  wind,  at  last  one  day,  when  he 
sees  the  sun  rise  across  the  desert,  is  so  over- 
whelmed with  the  magnificence  of  the  spectacle 


234       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

that  he  says :  *  ^  Surely  the  sun  is  God,  the  Crea- 
tor, and  this  will  I  worship!  '^  But  the  sun 
sets,  and  Abram  says :  ^  ^  God  does  not  set,  and  I 
cannot  worship  the  sun/'  But  when  the  moon 
and  the  stars  arise  out  of  the  East,  again  his 
soul  is  thrilled  with  the  glory  of  the  heavens, 
and  he  says :  ^  *  The  moon  surely  is  the  very  face 
of  God,  and  before  it  I  may  kneel !  ' '  But  the 
moon  and  the  stars  set,  and  once  more  the  sun 
appears,  whereupon  he  says :  ^ '  Verily,  these 
heavenly  bodies  are  no  gods,  for  they  obey  law; 
I  will  worship  Him  whose  law  they  obey/' 
There  is  such  an  idolatrous  tendency  in  us  all, 
for  it  is  hidden  in  the  core  of  human  nature  it- 
self, and  we  do  not  all  rise  above  it  as  Abram 
did.  We  are  all  ready  to  worship  the  creature 
instead  of  the  Creator ;  to  disperse  our  feelings 
of  reverence  on  inferior  objects;  to  adore  men 
in  exalted  hero-worship,  and  Nature  in  ecstatic 
Pantheism ;  to  be  now  of  the  temper  of  Carlyle, 
now  of  the  temper  of  Wordsworth;  but,  high 
and  reverent  as  such  a  temper  may  be,  we  may 
forget  God  in  our  worship.  Man  we  may  ad- 
mire and  love;  Nature  we  may  reverence  and 
commune  with ;  but  these  are  after  all  but  road- 
side altars  for  the  soul.  We  may  dissipate  on 
them  the  fund  of  religious  feelings  which  should 
be  reserved  for  God  alone.  We  may  spend  our 
faculties  of  worship  on  the  lower  object  and 
have  no  reverence  left  for  the  higher ;  worship- 


SELF-RESERVATION  235 

ping  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the  stars,  as  Abram 
did,  and  failing  to  worship  God.  Therefore,  the 
counsel  holds  good  for  ever,  * '  Take  heed  to  thy- 
self that  thou  offer  not  thy  burnt  offerings  in 
eveiy  place  that  thou  seest. '  ^ 

The  story  suggests,  then,  a  certain  high  voca- 
tion which  exists  in  human  life,  and  our  duty 
of  reserving  ourselves  for  it.  You  know  how 
Christ  said  to  St.  Peter,  ''  Follow  Me,  and  I 
will  make  you  a  fisher  of  men  '';  and,  rough 
and  ignorant  as  Peter  was,  yet  he  had  grace  and 
vision  to  recognise  the  higher  vocation  and  fol- 
low it.  You  know  also  how  Christ  put  the  same 
vocation  before  the  young  ruler,  and,  cultured 
and  accomplished  as  he  was,  yet  he  neglected  the 
vocation  and  did  not  follow  Christ.  The  same 
choice  is  presented  to  us  all,  and  the  most  pitia- 
ble thing  in  human  life  is  that  men  constantly 
refuse  the  higher  vocation  and  follow  the  lower. 
And  they  do  more  and  worse  than  this :  they 
spend  the  whole  strength  of  their  being  on  the 
lower.  The  energy  that  might  make  them  pub- 
lic benefactors  they  spend  to  accumulate  pri- 
vate fortunes ;  they  choose  wealth,  not  heroism; 
luxury,  not  sainthood ;  and  they  pour  out  all  the 
treasure  of  mind  and  heart  to  purchase  that 
which  is  not  bread,  whose  reward  satisfieth  not. 
I  speak,  no  doubt,  to  many  whose  hearts  are 
filled  with  the  natural  ambition  of  youth  to  suc- 
ceed in  life ;  will  you  believe  me  if  I  tell  you  that 


236       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

my  experience  is  that  the  only  real  happiness  in 
life  is  the  joy  of  being  good  and  doing  good! 
Will  you  bear  with  me  when  I  tell  you  that  to 
spend  all  the  best  energy  of  your  mind  and 
heart  on  earthly  success  is  a  profanation  of 
yourself,  a  sacrilege  of  your  own  soul!  Offer 
not  the  gift  of  yourself  on  every  wayside  altar 
— reserve  the  best  of  yourself  for  God.  The 
higher  vocation  salutes  you,  the  altar  of  God 
awaits  you;  reserve  yourself  for  that. 

What  would  it  have  mattered,  we  are  perhaps 
inclined  to  ask,  if  the  Israelites  had  sacrificed 
upon  these  ready-made  altars  of  the  old  heath- 
enism? It  would  surely  have  done  them  no 
harm  to  have  performed  an  act  that  was  clearly 
a  grateful  and  a  pious  act.  Ah!  but  there  was 
harm — the  harm  of  self -dispersal.  Faith  maybe 
too  facile,  feeling  too  fluent.  There  is  a  certain 
chastity  of  the  emotions  that  is  not  to  be  lightly 
unveiled.  It  is  not  the  man  with  whom  speech 
is  readiest  who  feels  most,  not  the  man  most 
susceptible  to  the  aestheticism  of  worship  who 
brings  to  God  the  trembling  rapture  that  has 
deeps  in  it,  and  profundities,  and  sacred  secre- 
cies. I  think  I  know  why  it  was  when  Christ 
called  Peter  he  obeyed  instantly ;  it  was  because 
he  had  unconsciously  reserved  himself  for  that 
hour.  There  had  been  no  dispersal  of  self,  no 
running  hither  or  thither  after  this  or  that  pop- 
ular voice  of  the  hour;  alone  on  the  Galilean 


SELF-RESERVATION  237 

lake,  under  the  starry  sky,  the  deep  heart  of  the 
man  had  j^earned  for  a  Christ,  and  when  the 
Christ  spoke,  all  that  mighty  heart  went  out  to 
Him.  And  I  think  I  know  why  it  was  that  the 
rich  young  ruler  did  not  obey  the  call  of  Christ ; 
there  had  been  too  great  a  dispersal  of  self  in 
a  life  that  had  many  interests,  and  he  was  not 
simple  enough  to  act  as  Peter  did.  For  the 
greatest  acts  of  life  we  need  the  unflawed  whole- 
ness of  a  heart  that  has  not  been  tampered  with ; 
therefore  offer  not  thy  burnt  offerings  on  every 
altar  which  thou  seest. 

Who  that  has  taken  any  interest  in  literature 
is  not  familiar  with  the  sad  spectacle  of  a  cer- 
tain dispersal  of  self  which  has  often  gone  on 
in  the  lives  of  men  of  genius,  and  has  been  their 
ruin!  The  truly  great  writer  is  he  who  most 
accurately  measures  the  nature  of  his  gift  and 
guards  it  with  the  most  sacred  vigilance.  Such 
a  man  does  his  work  in  that  spirit  of  sacredness 
which  animated  Milton  when  he  prayed  for  the 
Holy  Ghost  to  move  his  mind  to  utterance,  and 
"Wordsworth  when  he  said  that  vows  were  made 
for  him,  and  that  he  knew  himself  consecrate 
to  poetry.  Such  a  man  will  not  permit  himself 
to  do  anything  less  than  his  best.  He  works 
with  a  high  ideal,  and  puts  his  finest  conscience 
into  all  that  he  does.  So  far  as  the  bulk  of  his 
work  goes,  it  may  be  little  or  much,  but  no  man 
can  say  of  it  that  its  least  part  is  done  with 


238       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

wilful  slovenliness  or  indifference  to  the  highest 
ideals.  He  toils  in  the  same  scrupulous  spirit 
as  those  great  mediaeval  artists  who  fashioned 
those  parts  of  their  work  which  would  be  least 
observed,  and  which  indeed  would  never  be  seen 
at  all,  with  the  same  perfect  finish  and  fidelity 
as  those  which  they  knew  would  stand  in  the 
full  glare  of  a  critical  publicity.  Such  men  re- 
serve themselves;  they  attain  their  greatness 
by  the  concentration,  and  not  the  dispersion, 
of  power;  they  would  rather  do  one  thing  per- 
fectly than  a  dozen  things  with  only  a  fair  meas- 
ure of  success.  In  the  race  for  fame  scores  of 
men  pass  them,  but  they  take  no  notice.  They 
know  that  in  the  long  run  only  the  perfect  thing 
endures,  and  they  despise  the  ^^  loud  imperti- 
nence "  of  a  day's  fleeting  notoriety  for  the 
sake  of  that  higher  prize  of  immortality  which 
they  covet.  They  sacrifice  not  on  every  altar 
that  they  see,  but  reserve  themselves  for  that 
one  highest  thing  which  they  can  do  the  best. 

But  suppose  your  man  of  genius  does  not 
work  in  this  spirit,  what  happens?  He  is  se- 
duced by  the  wayside  altar,  and  never  reaches 
the  temple  of  fame,  which  is  the  holiest  and 
highest  of  all.  He  succumbs  to  the  importunity 
of  magazine  editors,  and  does  scamped  and  pal- 
try work  for  money.  The  pathway  to  the  high- 
est is  difficult,  and  it  is  strewn  with  the  bones 
of  those  who  have  failed;  the  roadside  altar 


SELF-RESERVATION  239 

stands  close  at  hand,  and  there  an  immediate 
reward  is  to  be  found.  He  argues  that  if  people 
are  ready  to  buy  his  inferior  work,  and  to  praise 
it,  he  would  be  criminally  foolish  not  to  con- 
ciliate their  humour.  He  becomes  a  literary 
hack;  he  ceases  to  be  a  man  of  genius.  For 
nothing  is  surer  than  this:  that  he  who  with- 
draws his  ambition  from  the  highest  things  and 
palters  with  his  literary  conscience,  and  works 
for  immediate  reward  rather  than  for  the  high- 
est reward  of  knowing  that  he  has  written  noth- 
ing that  is  not  his  best,  soon  finds  that  his  gen- 
eral standard  of  excellence  declines,  and  his 
power  of  achieving  the  highest  thing  diminishes. 
This  is  an  open  lesson,  and  one  that  is  written 
large  upon  the  literature  of  our  day.  Would 
it  not  have  been  infinitely  better  for  the  work 
of  Dickens  if  he  had  shunned  what  he  himself 
called  the  '^  garish  lights  ''  of  the  reciter's  plat- 
form, and  had  worked  on  in  calm  and  patience, 
perfecting  his  art?  Wlio  does  not  feel  that 
there  was  something  contemptible  in  that  in- 
sane desire  for  money  and  histrionic  publicity 
which  led  him  to  forsake  the  quiet  library, 
where  alone  his  true  work  could  be  done,  and 
go  on  with  his  readings,  even  when  he  knew 
that  they  were  killing  him?  Would  not  he  him- 
self have  found  a  far  deeper  joy  in  producing 
one  more  perfect  work,  which  would  have  been 
the  ripe  expression  of  his  genius,  than  in  all 


240       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

those  frantic  plaudits  of  the  crowd,  ''  hollow, 
and  restless,  and  loud  '^?  But  he  sacrificed  at 
the  wayside  altar,  and  the  sacrifice  he  laid  upon 
the  altar  was  his  own  genius.  The  money  he 
coveted  was  made,  but  the  perfect  book  could 
not  be  written;  the  actor  thrived,  but  the  artist 
died.  He  did  in  this  form  what  multitudes  have 
done,  and  are  doing  in  similar  or  other  forms : 
gained  the  world  at  the  price  of  himself.  As- 
suredly to  the  man  of  genius— poet,  artist, 
author— there  can  be  no  more  searching  word 
than  the  ancient  counsel  of  Moses,  ''  Take  heed 
to  thyself  that  thou  offer  not  thy  burnt  offer- 
ings in  every  place  that  thou  seest.'' 

The  same  spectacle  meets  us  in  that  great 
whirl  of  incessant  activities  in  which  so  many 
of  us  are  involved  to-day.  There  are  men  and 
women  who  have  a  sort  of  craze  for  versatility. 
They  sit  upon  every  sort  of  committee,  attend 
every  sort  of  meeting,  speak  on  every  sort  of 
subject.  They  are  reservoirs  of  fluent  rhetoric, 
which  they  are  ready  to  dispense  at  any  mo- 
ment, on  any  theme.  Their  minds  are  cabinets 
of  portable  opinions,  which  they  can  produce 
at  the  shortest  call.  They  would  think  that 
something  was  seriously  amiss  with  their  souls, 
and  count  the  day  ill  spent,  if  they  were  not  per- 
petually hurrying  from  engagement  to  engage- 
ment. The  weekly  diaries  of  their  industry  are 
appalling   documents.     They   are    good   men, 


SELF-RESERVATION  241 

well-meaning  men,  industrious  men;  but  after 
all  their  lives  are  a  failure.  And  why?  Be- 
cause they  have  never  learnt  to  practice  a  self- 
respecting  reserve  over  themselves.  One  vehe- 
ment conviction  would  carry  them  to  a  far 
nobler  form  of  usefuhiess  than  all  this  fecundity 
of  mere  opinion.  One  cause  that  should  absorb 
their  utmost  energy,  that  should  fire  and  stir 
them  into  vehement  enthusiasm,  that  should  be 
for  them  the  great  purpose  of  all  their  living, 
would  do  more  to  mould  their  characters  into 
heroism,  than  all  this  glib  advocacy  of  innumer- 
able causes  which  have  never  really  moved 
them.  Such  men  carry  no  weight.  When  they 
speak  they  never  cleave  the  mark  as  does  the 
master-bowman.  The  best  that  men  ever  say 
of  them  is,  ^ '  Oh,  put  Mr.  So-and-So  on  the  com- 
mittee; he's  a  useful  sort  of  man,  and  can't  do 
any  harm.''  They  are  the  mere  utility  men  of 
parties  and  movements,  to  whom  no  one  would 
think  of  entrusting  the  part  of  the  great  actor. 
And  so  they  sacrifice  upon  the  wayside  altar, 
and  waste  themselves  upon  a  multiplicity  of 
objects;  for  as  the  world  is  ordered  to-day,  it 
is  the  specialist  alone  whose  word  carries 
weight,  and  the  specialist  is  one  who  has  con- 
centrated himself  upon  one  supreme  aim,  and 
reserved  himself  for  one  sacred  and  engrossing 
devotion. 

Such  illustrations  as  these  lie  upon  the  out-' 


242       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

side  of  things ;  but  the  lesson  becomes  still  more 
searching  as  we  approach  the  moral  and  spiri- 
tual sphere.  How  pertinently  does  it  apply,  for 
example,  to  those  affections  which  inhabit  all 
human  hearts  and  have  so  much  to  do  with  the 
determination  of  human  destiny.  Probably  the 
most  important  of  all  questions  for  the  youth, 
who  stands  at  the  threshold  of  manhood  is  how 
he  is  going  to  treat  that  fund  of  affection  which 
is  in  his  heart  and  craves  a  corresponding  affec- 
tion. It  is  part  of  the  unhappy  cynicism  of  our 
day  to  jest  at  love  and  marriage ;  but  if  we  think 
of  them  rightly  and  nobly  we  shall  see  that  they 
are  the  greatest  facts  in  life.  The  best  men 
have  always  held  them  to  be  so,  and  there  is 
something  almost  awe-inspiring  as  well  as  beau- 
tiful in  the  intensity  of  that  passion  of  love 
which  has  animated  the  best  men  and  women. 
The  love  of  Dante,  of  Tennyson,  of  Kingsley, 
for  the  women  who  were  all  in  all  to  them,  is  one 
of  the  divinest  facts  in  human  history,  and  one 
that  has  never  failed  to  move  the  hearts  of  men. 
But  why  was  it  these  men  loved  so  intensely? 
How  was  it  that  this  divine  flame,  which  is  so 
often  dulled  in  the  gross  atmosphere  of  the 
world,  burned  in  them  with  such  purity  and 
brightness?  It  was  because  they  kept  it  in- 
tense by  never  dissipating  it  on  unworthy  fan- 
cies. They  had  not  sacrificed  on  the  wayside 
altar;   they  had  reserved  themselves   for  the 


SELF-RESERVATION  243 

great  sacramental  hour  of  a  true  and  enduring 
passion.  When  they  came  to  the  true  altar  and 
the  true  temple,  they  brought  to  it  hearts  whose 
virginal  freshness  and  depth  of  feeling  had 
never  been  dulled  or  frittered,  and  the  offering 
they  laid  upon  the  altar  had  no  blemish.  But 
with  how  many  men  and  women  is  the  very  re- 
verse true?  They  do  not  reserve  themselves: 
they  pour  out  the  precious  spikenard  of  the 
heart  on  unworthy  feet;  they  lose  the  first 
freshness  and  intensity  of  feeling  for  want  of 
that  self-reverence  which  sets  a  seal  upon  the 
heart  and  keeps  it  unsullied  and  serene;  and 
then,  when  the  true  hour  of  love  comes,  they 
have  not  the  power  of  loving  nobly,  and  the 
hour  finds  them  unready  and  strikes  in  vain. 
Do  not  suppose  that  I  am  now  touching  upon 
one  of  the  sentimental  themes  which  are  well 
enough  for  the  novelist  but  out  of  place  in  the 
pulpit;  I  say  that  love  is  a  very  serious  thing, 
a  divine  thing,  an  awful  and  a  beautiful  thing, 
and  that  the  worst  tragedies  of  life  arise  from 
our  misuse  of  it.  To  men  and  women  alike  this 
doctrine  of  self-reservation  applies;  and  as  we 
practise  it  we  shall  find  the  true  divineness  of 
love ;  as  we  fail  in  it  we  shall  miss  that  rare  and 
noble  joy  of  affection  which  moves  us  so  in  such 
lives  as  Tennyson's  and  Kingsley's.  *^  Take 
heed  to  thyself  that  thou  offer  not  thy  burnt 
offerings  in  every  place  that  thou  seest."  Don't 


244       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

waste  yourself  on  those  shallow  indulgences  of 
affection  which  leave  the  soul  sterile,  the  heart 
empty.  Eeserve  yourself,  lest  when  you  come  to 
the  true  temple  of  love  you  have  no  offering,  be- 
cause it  has  been  left  upon  the  wayside  altar. 

It  is  but  looking  at  the  same  picture  with  a 
certain  deepening  of  the  shadows  when  I  speak 
of  those  actually  evil  indulgences  which  stain 
the  lives  of  men,  and  are  in  truth  a  hideous 
profanation  of  life  at  the  wayside  altar.  We  all 
know  the  popular  theory  about  the  sowing  of 
wild  oats,  a  theory  of  which  we  hear  less  to-day 
than  once  we  did,  because  the  stern  angel  of  sci- 
ence has  crossed  our  path  and  frightened  us, 
and  made  us  understand  that  even  wild  oats 
spring  up  and  must  be  harvested.  But  it  is  not 
to  that  side  of  the  case  that  I  allude.  The  wild 
oats  may  or  may  not  be  harvested  by  the  ruth- 
less hands  of  heredity — we  know  that  even 
heredity  is  not  automatically  just  in  its  punish- 
ments. But  the  main  error  that  underlies  the 
wild  oats  theory  is  surely  this :  that  we  assume 
that  a  man  may  squander  purity  and  still  have 
enough  of  pure  passion  left  in  him  to  realise  an 
intense  and  noble  love ;  that  he  may  sacrifice  at 
the  wayside  altars  of  the  goddess  of  lubricity, 
and  still  be  able  to  offer  himself  as  a  whole  and 
blameless  worshipper  at  the  true  divine  altar  of 
love ;  that  after  sacrificing  at  every  altar  he  sees 
through  a  profligate  youth,  he  may  ascend  the 


SELF-RESERVATION  245 

very  hill  of  God  and  find  there  what  a  Dante 
found,  or  a  Kingsley.  He  cannot ;  he  never  will. 
The  stain  of  the  wayside  altar  is  on  him,  and  its 
leprosy  will  cleave  to  him  for  ever.  It  is  a  soul- 
stain  ;  it  is  a  thought-leprosy.  He  can  bring  to 
the  great  sacramental  hour  of  life  only  a  wasted 
heart.  He  has  already  poured  out  the  true  sac- 
ramental wine  of  life  upon  the  wayside  altar, 
and  his  heart  is  no  longer  whole,  his  feelings 
are  no  longer  intense  and  fresh.  Diminished 
power  of  feeling,  obstinate  incapacity  for  loving 
in  any  great  and  noble  way,  the  desire  to  love 
as  pure  men  and  women  love,  but  without  the 
power — is  not  that  the  true  Nemesis  of  the 
wayside  altar,  and  the  most  terrible  harvesting 
of  a  man's  wild  oats? 

Attention  was  called  the  other  day  to  what 
has  often  struck  the  student  of  art — the  ex- 
traordinary difference  in  two  well-known  like- 
nesses of  Rembrandt,  each  painted  by  himself. 
They  hang  in  the  Louvre,  and  they  tell  the 
tragedy  of  a  life.  In  the  one  Rembrandt  paints 
himself  as  a  young  man  ''full  of  life  and  cour- 
age; and  in  all  the  bravery  of  rich  gar- 
ments; the  little  moustache  is  twirled  up  auda- 
ciously, the  bright  brown  eyes  are  alight  with 
the  foreknowledge  of  victory. ''  The  other  pic- 
ture represents  him  as  somewhere  about  fifty, 
])rematurely  aged;  ''  the  dress  is  untidy,  even 
dirty;  an  old  cloth  is  on  his  head,  a  discoloured 


246       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

rag  round  his  throat;  the  moustache  draggled; 
patches  of  grey  hairs  grow  like  sedge  round 
the  jaws,  and  the  searching  eyes  have  become 
intensely  sad,  darkened,  as  it  were,  by  the 
shadow  of  inevitable  death.''  It  is  an  awful 
contrast.  It  is  as  though  the  great  artist,  out 
of  the  depth  of  an  unimaginable  despair,  bade 
us  look  on  this  picture  and  on  that.  Before  such 
a  spectacle  no  words  are  needed ;  we  recall  that 
sad  middle  period  of  Rembrandt's  life,  with  its 
public  shame  and  scandal,  and  we  know  that  he 
had  sacrificed  at  the  wayside  altar.  He  himself 
knew  it;  and  it  surely  must  have  been  in  some 
hour  of  poignant  self-reproach  that  he  took  up 
his  brush  and  with  a  master  hand  put  upon  the 
canvas  that  great  and  terrible  lesson  of  his  fall 
which  haunts  us  by  its  sadness  and  its  tragedy. 
Oh,  young  man,  rejoicing  in  thy  strength, 
'^  Take  heed  to  thyself  that  thou  offer  not  thy 
burnt  offerings  in  every  place  that  thou  seest. ' ' 
Reserve  thyself  and  guard  thy  honour  as  the 
very  fountain  of  life,  for  ^^  self-reverence,  self- 
knowledge,  self-control — these  three  alone  lead 
life  to  sovereign  power." 

The  youth  liable  to  betrayal  through  his  pas- 
sions needs  this  counsel,  but  the  man  of  steady 
virtue,  toiling  for  a  competence  or  a  fortune, 
needs  it  too.  The  wayside  altar  may  not  be  the 
altar  of  Venus  or  Aslitoreth,  only  of  Mammon. 
I  may  appeal  with  equal  force  to  you  men  of 


SELF-RESERVATION  247 

business,  whose  virtue  is  secure  enough,  and 
say,  Are  you  quite  sure  that  you  are  not  sur- 
rendering at  the  altar  of  Mammon  that  part 
of  yourself  which  belongs  to  God!  I  saw  the 
death  of  a  man  recorded  in  the  papers  recently 
whose  private  history  I  know.  He  was  once  a 
good,  humble  Christian,  a  poor  man,  interested 
in  his  Church  and  loyal  to  Christ.  He  became 
inunensely  wealthy,  almost  in  a  moment,  by  one 
sagacious  act,  and  from  that  hour  the  wayside 
altar  claimed  him.  He  gave  up  his  Church,  he 
moved  away  from  the  humble  Christians  who 
had  been  his  dearest  friends,  he  lived  in  all  the 
worldly  pomp  of  a  worldly  man  who  had  his 
portion  in  this  life,  and  now  he  is  dead,  and  I 
wondered,  as  I  read  the  news,  whether  in  that 
dying  hour  he  did  not  look  back  to  those  old 
days  when  he  walked  humbly  with  his  God,  and 
say,  ^^  It  was  better  with  me  then  than  now!'' 
God  forbid  that  I  should  judge  him ;  but  I  know 
that  when  I  come  to  die  the  only  memory  from 
which  I  shall  expect  to  gather  comfort  will  be 
the  memory  of  hours  passed  at  the  altar  of 
God.  Christ  calls  each  of  us  to  a  higher  voca- 
tion than  earthly  success,  to  the  service  of  the 
Most  High,  and  the  service  of  His  creatures,  and 
whatever  we  may  think  of  that  higher  vocation 
now,  when  life  ends  we  shall  see  that  it  was  the 
one  vocation  worth  our  effort,  the  better  part 
which  even  death  cannot  take  away  from  us. 


248       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

And  so  I  come,  lastly,  to  that  more  exclu- 
sively spiritual  sphere,  in  which  this  counsel 
finds  its  highest  application.  Does  it  not  sug- 
gest to  us  that  true  spirit  of  worship  without 
which  all  worship  is  vain?  The  wayside  altar 
may  be  for  us  the  creed,  the  religious  shibboleth, 
the  ecclesiastical  organisation  in  which  we  were 
brought  up.  Or  it  may  mean  the  mere  form 
of  church-going,  which  we  observe  without  any 
real  sense  of  the  solemnity  of  these  weekly  gath- 
erings for  praise  or  worship.  To  how  many  of 
us  is  this  the  real  altar  of  the  Highest,  for 
which  we  reserve  our  true  sacrifices'?  To  how 
many  of  us  is  it  a  mere  wayside  altar,  where 
we  halt  without  thought,  and  which  we  ap- 
proach without  any  true  intensity  of  feeling! 
Is  it  not  true  that  we  often  waste  ourselves  so 
completely  upon  the  chance  altars  of  life  that  it 
becomes  impossible  for  us  to  rise  into  any  real 
elevation  of  spiritual  feeling,  or  to  attempt  any 
great  spiritual  task! 

It  is  Christ  Himself  who  calls  us  to  this  act 
of  reserving  ourselves  for  God,  and  Christ  also 
is  our  example.  Oh,  how  wonderful  is  that  self- 
reservation  which  characterised  the  life  of 
Christ!  He  hears  while  yet  a  boy  the  call  of 
God,  and  then  He  returns  to  Nazareth,  and  for 
eighteen  years  silence  covers  Him  as  with  a 
garment.  Here  is  all  Judea  and  Galilee  vol- 
canic with  suppressed  patriotism,  all  kinds  of 


SELF-RESERVATION  249 

movements  and  crusades  of  liberty,  and  stir- 
rings of  revolt — not  a  word  from  Christ.  Why- 
was  it?  It  means  that  Christ  was  reserving 
Himself  for  His  true  life-work.  He  had  no 
strength  to  spend  on  the  propagandas  of  an 
hour;  these  wayside  altars  could  not  seduce 
Him.  His  altar  was  Calvary,  and  to  that  He 
travelled.  That  was  the  sacred  place  where  God 
waited  for  Him,  and  He  knew  it.  And  so,  when 
the  hour  struck  He  was  ready;  He  brought  to 
it  a  soul  fresh,  undefiled,  unwasted,  and  became 
the  very  Lamb  of  God  who  took  away  the  sins 
of  the  world. 

Calvary  also  is  the  altar  where  God  awaits 
us.  The  one  divine  sacrifice  is  the  sacrifice  of 
ourselves,  body,  soul,  and  spirit,  and  it  is  our 
reasonable  service.  Men  talk  of  the  pain  of  re- 
nouncing the  world  for  Christ ;  ah,  far  more  ter- 
rible is  that  renunciation  of  Christ  for  the  world 
which  leaves  men  at  last  wailing  with  the  dying 
Paracelsus — 

"  Love,  hope,  fear,  faith,  these  make  humanity, 
These  are  its  sign,  and  note,  and  character, 
And  these  I  have  lost." 

For  to  lose  Christ  is  to  lose  ourselves;  and 
to  find  Christ  is  to  find  both  ourselves  and 
Christ.  Oh,  heedless  soul,  seest  not  thou  how 
thou  misusest  both  thyself  and  thy  Master, 
when  thou  givest  to  the  world  what  was  meant 


250        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

for  God  1  Let  the  wayside  altar  no  longer  hold 
thy  feet  from  following  Him,  who  waits  for  thee 
at  the  altar  of  the  Cross.  To  live  for  Christ,  to 
walk  in  His  light,  to  love  and  serve  our  fellow- 
creatures  for  His  sake,  this  is  life  indeed;  and 
let  our  prayer  be  the  prayer  of  the  old  mystic 
poet — 

"  O  King  of  kings,  give  me  such  strength 
In  this  great  war  depending, 
That  I  may  here  prevail  at  length, 

And  ever  be  ascending, 
Till  I  at  last  arrive  to  Thee 
The  Source  of  all  felicity." 


XIII 
SAVING  FAITH 

I  WISH  to  speak  of  the  greatest  of  all  Chris- 
tian ethics,  the  saving  power  of  belief,  and 
the  passages  on  which  I  shall  base  my  ad- 
dress are  these:  ^*  Jesus  saith  unto  her.  He 
that  believeth  on  Me,  though  he  die,  yet  shall  he 
live :  and  whosoever  livetli  and  believeth  on  Me 
shall  never  die  ' '  (John  xi.  25) .  ^ '  And  He  saith 
unto  them,  Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach 
the  gospel  to  the  whole  creation.  He  that  be- 
lieveth and  is  baptised  shall  be  saved:  but  he 
that  disbelieveth  shall  be  condemned  "  (Mark 
xvi.  15).  Salvation  by  faith  is  the  greatest  of 
all  Christian  ethics;  it  is  also  the  most  novel 
and  original.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Christ 
put  it  in  the  forefront  of  all  His  teaching.  The 
two  passages  I  have  quoted  are  cardinal  in- 
stances. To  Martha  He  boldly  says  that  belief 
is  life;  he  that  believes  has  become  possessed 
of  a  new  principle  of  life,  by  virtue  of  which 
he  enters  on  a  new  scale  of  being,  and  shall 
never  die.  To  His  disciples  He  entrusts  the 
principle  of  belief  as  the  great  secret  He  has 
to  communicate  to  the  world:  he  that  believes 

251 


252       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

shall  be  saved,  and  he  that  disbelieves  shall  be 
condemned.  Faith  thus  becomes  the  watchword 
of  the  new  religion.  A  new  decalogue  of  duties 
is  declared,  a  new  type  of  heroism  is  set  up: 
but  of  all  duty  and  all  heroism  faith  is  the  root. 
It  is  this  that  lifts  Christianity  out  of  the  cate- 
gory of  the  philosophies ;  it  is  not  a  philosophy 
but  a  life,  a  life  of  faith  upon  the  Son  of  God. 
It  is  this  which  has  been  the  secret  of  its  con- 
quest; it  appeals  to  a  faculty  in  human  nature, 
not  new  but  forgotten,  the  faculty  of  faith. 

There  are  three  tendencies  in  the  thought  of 
our  own  time,  to  which  I  will  briefly  allude  be- 
cause they  give  vital  interest  to  this  theme. 

First,  there  is  the  apparent  indifference  to 
religion.  I  say  apparent  indiiference,  for  I  am 
by  no  means  sure  that  it  is  a  real  and  reasoned 
indifference.  Men  often  obey  a  certain  drift  of 
thought  and  conduct,  without  acquiescing  in  it, 
and  indeed  without  thinking  much  about  it.  The 
true  reason  for  the  neglect  of  public  worship 
may  be  rather  an  objection  to  the  form  of  wor- 
ship than  a  real  deadness  of  feeling  toward  re- 
ligion itself.  Men  may  turn  from  the  Church 
without  turning  from  Christ,  and  often  they  do 
so  upon  a  right  instinct,  because  the  Church  is 
no  longer  the  true  representative  of  Christ. 
Nevertheless  even  an  apparent  indifference  to 
religion  can  scarcely  exist  without  some  radical 
decay  of  religious  belief.    It  is  possible  that  the 


SAVING  FAITH  253 

decay  of  belief  is  the  result  of  the  indifference 
to  the  means  of  religion.  The  religious  instinct 
is  not  nourished.  The  Christian  teachers  who 
speak  with  authority  are  few.  The  grave  and 
thrilling  spectacle  of  lives  lived  in  the  full  spirit 
of  Christian  heroism  is  not  common.  More  and 
more,  as  the  spirit  of  Mammon  eats  into  the 
age,  men  lose  the  habit  of  living  in  intimacy 
with  high  and  solemn  thoughts,  they  lose  sight 
of  the  dignity  and  splendour  of  human  life,  and 
hence  what  appears  to  be  an  indifference  to 
religion  becomes  one  of  the  marked  features  of 
the  age. 

Again,  there  is  a  tendency  to  complete  dis- 
satisfaction with  materialism  as  a  workable 
theory  of  the  universe. 

The  old  materialism  was  satisfied,  cheerful, 
even  jubilant.  Harriet  Martineau  speaks  of  the 
real  joy  she  found  in  deliverance  from  what  she 
called  the  ' '  decaying  mythology  ' '  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion.  She  took  positive  pleasure  in  the 
thought  of  its  approaching  annihilation.  She, 
and  those  who  thought  with  her,  announced  as 
a  sort  of  gospel  to  mankind  struggling  in  the 
wilderness,  that  the  promised  land  was  a  mirage 
and  they  expected  mankind  to  welcome  the  in- 
telligence. That  was  the  spirit  of  the  old  ma- 
terialism ;  the  later  materialism  is  full  of  incur- 
able despair  and  sadness.  It  is  no  longer  sure 
that  it  is  right.    It  is  no  longer  able  to  disguise 


254       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

the  truth  that  there  are  a  hundred  things  in 
earth  and  heaven  which  were  not  dreamed  of  in 
its  philosophy.  It  has  fired  its  last  shot,  and  the 
fortresses  of  faith  still  stand :  it  has  announced 
the  promised  land  a  mirage,  and  yet  mankind 
follows  the  pillar  of  cloud  and  fire;  and  in  the 
heart  of  the  materialist  of  to-day  there  is  a  new 
yearning  toward  faith,  an  ardent  wish  to  be- 
lieve more  than  his  reason  will  permit  him  to 
believe. 

And  there  is  an  equal  dissatisfaction  with 
agnosticism.  Men  have  come  to  see  that  it  is 
not  doubts  that  count  but  beliefs.  They  have 
come  to  see  that  it  is  debilitating  to  both  char- 
acter and  conduct  to  rule  life  by  negatives.  It 
is  not  the  Everlasting  Nay  by  which  man  lives, 
but  the  Everlasting  Yea.  Even  to  the  agnostic 
it  has  become  apparent  that  to  believe  the  least 
fraction  of  a  truth  with  vigorous  sincerity  will 
carry  a  man  further  toward  the  heights  of  hu- 
man achievement  than  the  denial  of  a  hundred 
errors. 

Here,  then,  are  three  tendencies  of  our  own 
time,  so  general,  that  they  cannot  but  be  felt 
by  many.  Lives  are  being  degraded,  careers 
are  being  blighted,  souls  are  being  lost  every 
day,  not  by  indulgence  in  gross  vices,  but  by  the 
depression  of  the  spiritual  instinct,  the  lack  of 
high  belief,  the  feebleness  and  uncertainty  of 
such  belief  as  is  held :  and  behold  to  you  Christ 


SAVING  FAITH  255 

comes  with  the  great  words,  He  that  believes  on 
Me  shall  live:  he  that  believes  shall  be  saved. 
If  ever  there  was  a  Gospel  for  the  age,  this  is 
the  Gospel.  If  ever  there  was  a  challenge  which 
rings  straight  home  to  the  innermost  citadel  of 
the  spirit,  this  is  the  challenge.  The  question 
is :  what  does  this  Gospel  of  belief  really  mean! 
how  can  it  be  justified!  how  can  we  bring  our- 
selves to  receive  it  f 

Manifestly  the  first  question  to  be  asked  is: 
What  is  Belief,  in  the  Christian  sense  of  the 
term! 

Belief,  in  the  Christian  sense  of  the  term,  is 
reliance  upon  the  intuitions  rather  than  upon 
the  reason.  With  the  heart  man  believes  unto 
righteousness. 

Look  at  the  whole  method  of  Christ  ^s  teach- 
ing and  you  will  see  at  once  what  this  definition 
means.  Has  it  ever  struck  you  that  the  silences 
and  the  omissions  in  the  teachings  of  Christ  are 
remarkable  !  He  does  not  attempt  to  prove  the 
existence  of  God,  He  takes  it  for  granted.  He 
does  not  offer  a  single  argument  for  the  exist- 
ence of  the  soul,  or  the  prolongation  of  human 
destiny  beyond  the  earth,  or  the  certainty  of 
an  unseen  spiritual  world.  He  shows  us  a  pub- 
lican at  prayer — that  is  His  way  of  proving  the 
existence  of  a  soul.  He  shows  us  Dives  and 
Lazarus — that  is  His  way  of  making  us  aware 
of  the  immortal  destinies  of  man,  and  of  his  re- 


256        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

lation  to  an  unseen  world.  Why  is  Christ  silent 
upon  the  arguments  which  make  for  these  great 
convictions!  Because  He  knows  that  no  argu- 
ment can  give  them  cogency.  They  lie  outside 
the  reason.  They  are  witnessed  to  by  the  intui- 
tions of  mankind.  It  is  to  these  intuitions  that 
Christ  appeals,  and  His  appeal  was  justified 
by  the  astonishing  fact  that  while  men  eagerly 
disputed  His  teachings  upon  conduct,  the  worst 
man  never  disputed  His  fundamental  assump- 
tions of  the  existence  of  God,  of  the  soul,  and 
of  an  unseen  place  of  judgment  behind  the  veils 
of  time.  Christ  in  His  own  perfection  and  pu- 
rity of  life,  suggests  God ;  the  publican  at  prayer 
vindicates  the  soul,  for  mankind  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  ages,  has  been  a  creature  con- 
scious of  a  need  for  prayer ;  and  the  inequalities 
of  life  displayed  in  Dives  and  Lazarus,  suggest 
a  spiritual  universe  where  wrong  is  righted, 
and  final  justice  done  upon  mankind. 

You  will  perhaps  say  that  this  is  to  beg  the 
entire  case ;  and  so  it  would  be,  if  man  were  no 
more  than  a  rational  creature.  But  man  is  an 
irrational  as  well  as  a  rational  creature,  and  all 
that  is  noblest  in  him  springs  from  a  kind  of 
redeeming  irrationality.  Love,  heroism,  mar- 
tyrdom, are  all  acts  of  sublime  irrationality. 
Put  to  the  test,  we  refuse  to  be  governed  wholly 
by  our  reason,  and  we  refuse  every  day.  A 
man  who  never  thought  or  acted,  save  upon  the 


SAVING  FAITH  257 

full  consent  of  his  reason,  would  be  a  sorry 
creature,  and  his  life  a  dismal  spectacle.  There 
is  a  logic  of  the  heart  which  is  stronger  than  the 
logic  of  the  reason.  No  logic  of  the  reason 
could  justify  George  Eliot,  who  had  repudiated 
Christianity  as  vigorously  as  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau,  in  reading  Thomas  a  Kempis  all  her  life, 
and  having  the  immortal  meditations  of  the  old 
monk  beside  her  bedside  as  she  died;  but  the 
logic  of  the  heart  justified  her,  and  we  love  her 
for  submitting  to  it.  What  had  she,  a  woman 
who  thrust  aside  all  the  theologies  as  incredible, 
to  do  with  a  Dinah  Morris  preaching  Christ 
crucified  upon  a  village  green?  Yet  she  does 
paint  Dinah  Morris,  and  through  the  lips  of  the 
Methodist  evangelist  she  lets  her  own  soul  utter 
a  message  which  her  intellect  rejected.  There 
is  no  justification  in  reason  for  the  saying  of 
Tennyson,  that  he  would  be  sorely  afraid  to  live 
his  life  without  God's  presence,  for  he  believed 
that  if  God  withdrew  His  presence  from  the 
universe  but  for  one  instant  ^^  Every  atom  of 
the  creation,  both  animate  and  inanimate,  would 
come  utterly  to  nought ' ' ;  but  there  is  justifica- 
tion in  those  intuitions  that  lie  behind  and  rise 
above  reason.  Here,  then,  is  the  first  great 
helpful  thought  for  you  who  find  the  whole 
theory  of  belief  incredible ;  you  are  not  asked  to 
believe  with  the  mind,  but  with  the  heart.  It 
is  not  argument  but  intuition  that  makes  the 


258        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

Christian  believer.  Faith  is  a  venture,  the  ven- 
ture of  the  soul,  in  opposition  to  the  reason. 
There  is  something  in  each  one  of  us,  in  the 
child  at  his  mother's  knee,  in  the  savage  at  his 
prayers,  in  the  brilliant  woman  of  genius  still 
reading  Thomas  a  Kempis  in  spite  of  philo- 
sophic doubt,  something  to  which  Christ  ap- 
peals, and  when  we  act  upon  that  inner  witness 
we  believe  in  truths  which  the  mind  rejects. 
With  the  heart,  not  with  the  mind,  we  believe 
unto  righteousness;  and  he  that  so  believes  is 
saved,  he  that  disbelieves  is  condemned. 

That  is  the  first  helpful  thought  about  Belief ; 
the  next  is,  that  all  belief  in  the  Christian  sense, 
narrows  itself  down  to  belief  in  the  spiritual 
nature  of  man,  and  of  the  universe. 

To  Martha  Christ  puts  one  question  and  sub- 
mits but  one  article  of  faith :  ^  ^  He  that  believes 
in  Me,  though  he  die,  yet  shall  he  live :  believest 
thou  this?  ''  Believeth  thou  what!  That  Laza- 
rus even  now  is  something  more  than  decaying 
dust  in  the  charnel-house.  It  all  hinges  there — 
is  Lazarus,  is  man,  only  so  much  matter  liable 
to  disruption  and  dispersion,  or  is  he  spirit? 
Is  the  dust  in  the  charnel-house  Lazarus,  or  is 
the  real  Lazarus  even  now  existent,  a  spirit  who 
can  once  more,  if  God  should  so  will  it,  re-enter 
the  broken  house  of  flesh  I  To  believe  that  is  to 
accept  all  that  is  fundamental  in  Christianity. 
There  is  but  one  real  issue  to  be  fought:  it  is 


SAVING  FAITH  259 

between  faith  and  unfaith,  the  material  or  the 
spiritual  nature  of  man.  Decide  that,  and  all  is 
decided.  If  there  is  a  real  spiritual  nature  in 
man,  an  immaterial  body  as  the  Egyptians 
thought,  a  surviving  essence  as  the  Buddhist 
thought,  a  personality  not  subject  to  death,  as 
Mr.  Myers  has  sought  to  prove  by  scientific 
evidence,  in  his  great  book  upon  the  subject, 
then  the  existence  of  God,  the  divine  mission  of 
Jesus,  the  Eesurrection  in  the  Garden,  and  the 
future  life  of  man,  are  all  probable,  credible, 
and  even  inevitable  truths;  if  there  is  no  such 
spiritual  essence  in  man,  they  are  all  manifest 
fictions. 

I  press  this  point,  because  it  is  the  real  pivot 
of  belief,  and  also  because  when  belief  is  in  dis- 
cussion, it  is  usually  theological  dogmas  that 
are  attacked,  while  this,  the  main  point,  is  com- 
monly overlooked.  Thus,  for  example.  Mr. 
Cotter  Morison  attacks  the  story  of  the  Fall, 
and  says  that  man  has  not  fallen,  but  risen,  and 
that  being  so,  the  whole  theory  of  redemption 
is  disproved.  Mr.  Blatchford,  again,  in  his 
articles  in  the  Clarion,  which  have  attracted  so 
much  attention,  suggests  a  long  series  of  theo- 
logical puzzles,  ranging  from  the  Immaculate 
Conception  to  the  meaning  of  Hell  and  Heaven. 
Other  adversaries  of  the  Christian  faith  of  an 
earlier  generation,  Huxley,  for  example,  picked 
out  certain  Miracles  for  discussion  and  deri- 


260       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

sion,  and  sought  to  make  them  the  test  ques- 
tions of  the  Christian  faith.  None  of  these 
matters  are  cardinal.  Christ  suggests  but  one 
question  as  cardinal:  do  you  grant  or  do  you 
not  grant  the  spiritual  nature  of  man  I  Is  the 
child,  the  wife,  the  parent  you  have  lost  quite 
dissolved  into  nothingness?  Is  it  Lazarus  that 
lies  in  the  tomb,  or  merely  some  cast-off  raiment 
which  Lazarus  once  wore,  and  wears  no  more, 
because  he  is  a  spirit  in  the  bosom  of  God? 
What  do  you  really  believe  about  these  dead 
folk  who  loved  you?  If  you  reply  that  for  you 
the  thought  of  the  extinction  of  personality  is 
absurd,  if  you  really  believe  that  death  is  but  a 
phase,  a  parenthesis,  an  interruption  in  the  con- 
tinuity of  life,  and  that  your  dead  child,  or  wife, 
or  parent,  exists  at  this  moment  in  some  condi- 
tion not  intelligible  to  the  physical  senses,  then 
you  have  granted  the  fundamental  truth  of  the 
Christian  religion.  You  have  asserted  the 
spiritual  nature  of  man ;  you  have  allowed  your 
intuition  to  override  your  reason;  you  have 
trusted  the  logic  of  the  heart  against  the  logic 
of  the  intellect,  and  that  is  the  essence  of  Belief. 
It  is  because  Christ  thus  narrows  belief  to 
this  single  issue  that  He  simplifies  it  too. 
Neither  the  criticism  of  Mr.  Cotter  Morison 
upon  the  Fall,  nor  the  theological  conundrums 
of  Mr.  Blatchford,  nor  the  attack  on  miracles 
of  Huxley,  shak6  my  faith,  because  my  faith 


SAVING  FAITH  261 

does  not  rest  on  these  things.  I  may  or  may 
not  hold  by  these  things;  my  acceptance  or  re- 
jection of  them  does  not  touch  the  root-principle 
of  my  faith.  I  do  not  believe  that  Christ  will 
condemn  any  man  for  rejecting  the  story  of  the 
Fall,  or  for  refusing  credence  to  this  or  that 
theological  dogma,  or  for  rejecting  the  evidence 
of  miracles.  The  thing  that  does  condemn  a 
man  is  disbelief  in  his  own  soul.  The  thing 
that  saves  a  man  is  belief  in  his  own  soul.  How 
far  that  belief  may  go,  or  what  it  may  include, 
will  vary;  but  the  abiding  and  invariable  fac- 
tor of  belief  is  this  belief  in  man  as  a  creature 
with  a  soul. 

Believest  thou  this? — that  though  a  man  die 
yet  shall  he  live — that  is  the  great  fundamental 
of  belief,  that  is  the  real  root  of  faith,  that  is 
the  supreme  miracle  of  the  universe ;  and  when 
we  can  accept  this  cardinal  truth  that  God  made 
man  in  His  own  image,  and  breathed  into  him  a 
living  and  immortal  soul,  no  lesser  question  of 
theological  controversy  need  disturb  us. 

But  it  will  follow  as  a  matter  of  course,  that 
in  believing  large  things  we  shall  also  be 
enabled  to  believe  lesser  things.  Christ  con- 
tinually taught  that  knowledge  comes  through 
faith;  we  do  not  know  in  order  to  believe,  but 
we  believe  in  order  that  we  may  know.  He  who 
does  the  will  of  God  knows  if  the  doctrine  be 
true.     He  who  submits  himself  to  the  great 


262       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

venture  and  experience  of  faith,  finds  that  be- 
lief grows  by  believing.  For  faith  is  not  a  state 
of  mind  but  a  mode  of  action — he  that  believes, 
and  is  baptised.  Belief  is  not  assent  to  a  truth, 
it  is  willingness  to  act  upon  moral  and  spiritual 
intuition,  to  be  baptised.  The  cardinal  error  of 
many  of  you  lies  there  perhaps;  you  believe 
feebly  because  you  will  not  act  on  your  pro- 
fessed belief.  You  will  make  the  venture  of 
thought,  but  not  the  venture  of  conduct.  You 
admit  the  existence  of  a  soul  within  you,  but 
you  do  not  live  as  though  you  had  a  soul.  And 
therefore  Christ  tells  you  that  the  only  way  to 
find  a  faith  true  is  to  live  as  though  it  were  true. 
Believe,  and  be  baptised,  and  then  belief  will 
save  you.  Set  about  the  great  task  of  living 
as  a  spiritual  creature,  and  the  range  of  your 
spiritual  perceptions  will  widen.  A  truth  lived 
is  the  only  kind  of  truth  that  is  authoritative  to 
the  mind  and  conscience,  and  he  who  does  live 
his  truth  rarely  fails  to  find  his  truth  becoming 
wider,  deeper,  surer,  by  the  mere  act  of  reduc- 
ing it  to  practice. 

And  now  I  put  it  to  you  whether  there  is  not  a 
real  saving  force  in  faith?  Suppose  you  have 
a  faith  no  wider  in  its  scope,  no  more  varied 
in  its  elements,  than  faith  in  the  bare  fact  of  the 
human  soul,  will  not  that  faith  save  you  if  you 
will  dare  to  rule  your  life  by  it!  It  will  save 
you  from  materialism,  that  deadliest  foe  of 


SAVING  FAITH  263 

man,  for  if  you  believe  in  your  own  soul  you 
must  seek  to  live  not  after  the  flesh,  but  after 
the  spirit.  It  will  save  you  from  the  corruption 
and  pollution  of  the  world,  for  yours  will  be  the 
self-reverence  and  the  pure  idealism,  which 
must  needs  love  the  highest  when  you  see  it.  It 
will  save  you  from  despair  at  the  grave,  for  you 
will  recognise  yourself  as  a  creature  fitted  for 
immortal  destinies.  And  as  you  live  by  such  a 
faith,  you  will  find  it  always  drawing  its  circle 
wider.  It  will  soon  come  to  include  Christ,  for 
there  will  be  nothing  incredible  in  the  thought  of 
God  revealed  in  Christ,  since  God  is  revealed  in 
all  men.  It  will  include  the  Eesurrection  of 
Christ,  for  if  man  be  a  spirit,  whose  real  life 
lies  not  in  the  body,  but  in  the  soul,  it  will  no 
longer  seem  incredible  that  one  should  rise 
from  the  dead.  It  will  include  the  vision  of  a 
far-off  Eternity,  for  he  who  has  eternity  within 
his  heart,  cannot  doubt  that  he  is  the  heir  of 
things  unseen.  At  every  stage  of  life  faith  will 
prove  your  salvation.  He  that  believes  in  high 
things  is  saved  from  the  tyranny  of  low  things ; 
he  that  believes  in  God  is  saved  from  the  snare 
of  the  Evil  One.  And  he  that  believes  not  is 
condemned.  He  is  condemned  not  by  any 
arbitrary  tribunal,  but  at  the  bar  of  his  own 
better  nature;  he  condemns  himself  to  a  low, 
and  poor,  and  mean,  and  perhaps  a  wicked  life 
by  his  own  refusal  to  believe  the  witness  of  his 


264       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

own  spirit.  For  the  real  cause  of  ruin  in  a 
thousand  lives  around  us  is  not  crime  or  vice  or 
lust,  which  are  secondary  causes  only;  the 
primary  cause  is  the  lack  of  that  strong  and  liv- 
ing faith  which  lifts  men  above  the  power  of 
vice  or  lust,  by  enabling  them  to  live  as  seeing 
things  that  are  invisible.  The  old  evangelistic 
watchword,  ''  Only  believe,''  has  a  truer  sanc- 
tion than  we  imagine,  for  belief  is  the  key  of 
conduct,  and  Christ  states  a  truth,  sanctioned 
by  the  long  history  and  experience  of  men  upon 
the  earth  through  all  ages,  when  He  says,  '  ^  He 
that  believes  shall  be  saved,  and  he  that  dis- 
believes shall  be  condemned." 

My  brethren,  Christ  waits  even  now  to  teach 
you  the  mystery  and  joy  of  faith.  He  bids  you 
come  to  Him,  doubts  and  all,  even  as  He  did  not 
turn  away  from  the  man  who  cried,  '^  Lord,  I 
believe;  help  Thou  my  unbelief.''  Concerning 
those  doubts,  whatever  they  may  be,  I  would 
counsel  you  to  weigh  Bacon's  wise  word,  "  A 
little  philosophy  inclines  men  to  atheism;  but 
depth  of  philosophy  bringeth  men's  minds  back 
to  religion."  I  would  beg  you  to  have  some 
regard  for  that  enormous  mass  of  testimony, 
drawn  from  more  than  nineteen  centuries  of 
Christian  history,  to  the  real  power  of  faith  to 
inspire  the  noblest  lives,  before  you  turn  your 
face  from  Christ.  I  speak  to  you  as  the  am- 
bassador of  Christ,  I  plead  with  you  for  your 


SAVING  FAITH  265 

own  soul.  The  time  must  come,  and  come  soon, 
when,  to  quote  the  phrase  of  a  great  material- 
istic writer,  we  must  ^^  pass  out  into  the  mid- 
night." But  there  is  no  midnight  for  the 
Christian,  for  Christ  has  turned  the  darkness 
into  everlasting  light.  The  deepening  shadows 
of  the  earthly  evening  do  but  reveal  the  more 
clearly  the  divine  stars  of  faith.  I  preach  to 
you  what  I  have  found  true  amid  a  thousand 
difficulties  and  temptations,  that  faith  saves; 
and  I  make  my  confession  that  all  I  am  I  owe 
to  the  faith  I  have  learned  through  Jesus 
Christ.  And  so  I  have  but  one  message  to  pro- 
claim, and  may  God  give  us  all  grace  to  receive 
it — He  that  believeth  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
with  all  his  heart  shall  be  saved,  and  he  that 
believeth  not  shall  be  condemned. 


XIV 

CHKIST  AMONG  THE  COMMON  THINGS 
OF  LIFE 

{Published  in  the  ''Brooklyn  Eagle^^  on  the  Saturday 
preceding  the  Mission  at  Plymouth  Church.) 

MY  subject  is  '^  Christ  Among  the  Com- 
mon Things  of  Life.''  The  texts  on 
which  I  wish  to  base  my  address  are 
from  John  xxi.  9 :  *  ^  As  soon  then  as  they  were 
come  to  land,  they  saw  a  fire  of  coals  there,  and 
fish  laid  thereon,  and  bread  ' ' ;  and  John  xxi.  12 : 
^ '  And  Jesus  saith  unto  them.  Come  and  dine. ' ' 

I  cannot  read  these  words  without  indulging 
for  a  moment  in  a  reminiscence.  Not  long  ago, 
in  the  early  morning,  while  all  the  world  slept, 
I  stood  beside  the  Sea  of  Tiberias,  just  as  the 
morning  mist  lifted,  and  watched  a  single 
brown-sailed  fishing  boat  making  for  the  shore, 
and  the  tired  fishermen  dragging  their  net  to 
land.  In  that  moment  it  seemed  to  me  as  if 
more  than  the  morning  mist  lifted — twenty 
centuries  seemed  to  melt  like  mist,  and  the  last 
chapter  of  St.  John's  Gospel  seemed  to  enact 
itself  anew  before  my  eyes.  For  so  vivid  was 
the  sense  of  something  familiar  in  the  scene,  so 

see 


CHRIST  AND  THINGS  OF  LIFE     267 

mystic  was  the  hour,  that  I  should  scarce  have 
been  surprised  had  I  seen  a  fire  of  coals  burning 
on  the  shore,  and  heard  the  voice  of  Jesus  in- 
viting these  tired  fishermen  to  come  and  dine. 

Now  I  felt  that,  if  I  was  sensible  of  the 
haunting  presence  of  Christ  by  that  Galilean 
shore,  how  much  more  these  disciples,  in  whose 
minds  every  aspect  of  the  Galilean  lake  was  con- 
nected with  some  intimate  and  thrilling  memory 
of  the  ministry  of  Jesus.  Northward,  as  the 
morning  mist  lifted,  the  eye  beheld  the  white 
outline  of  Capernaum,  that  city  of  Christ's 
second  miracle,  when  at  a  word  the  child  of 
a  certain  nobleman  was  made  whole — Caper- 
naum, that  hostile  and  incredulous  city,  of 
which  Christ  said,  ''  Thou,  Capernaum,  which 
art  exalted  unto  heaven,  shall  be  thrust  down 
to  hell.'' 

Immediately  on  the  other  side  of  the  lake  lay 
the  country  of  the  Gergesenes,  where  Jesus  had 
met  the  two  demoniacs;  where,  again.  He  had 
found  a  hostile  people,  who  had  besought  Him 
to  leave  their  coasts.  Behind  the  town  of  Ti- 
berias itself  rose  the  green  hills  over  which 
wound  the  road  to  Nazareth  of  Galilee — those 
hills  on  which  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  was 
preached,  and  where  Christ  had  fed  the  multi- 
tude— and  just  beyond  their  rounded  ridge  the 
town  of  the  first  miracle,  where  He  had  turned 
the  water  into  wine. 


268       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

Why  do  I  recall  these  miracles?  Because 
each  has  one  significance,  each  reveals  Christ 
among  the  common  things  of  life.  And  that 
appears  to  me  the  great  feature  of  this  beautiful 
resurrection  story.  Christ  once  more  stands 
among  the  common  things  of  life;  the  fire,  the 
fish,  the  bread — all  common  things ;  a  group  of 
tired,  hungry  fishers — all  common  men;  and  He 
is  there  to  affirm  that  in  His  resurrection  He  has 
not  broken  His  bond  with  men,  but  strengthened 
it — ^wherever  common  life  goes  on  there  is  Jesus 
still. 

Notice  the  words  with  which  the  story  opens, 
and  you  will  see  at  once  that  this  is  the  real  clue 
to  its  interpretation.  ^ '  When  the  morning  had 
now  come,  Jesus  stood  on  the  shore,  but  the 
disciples  knew  not  that  it  was  Jesus.''  A 
strange  thing  that!  Why  did  they  not  know 
Him?  Because  they  were  not  looking  for  Him 
in  such  a  scene.  It  had  seemed  a  natural  thing, 
if  Jesus  should  appear  at  all,  that  He  should 
appear  in  the  Garden,  a  vision  of  life  at  the 
very  altar  of  death.  It  seemed  yet  more  proba- 
ble and  appropriate  that  He  should  appear  in 
the  upper  room,  that  room  made  sacred  by 
holiest  love  and  memory.  If  any  words  of 
Christ  yet  lingered  in  the  mind,  and  had  power 
to  thrill  these  men  they  were  surely  these  words : 
^*  Ye  shall  see  the  Son  of  Man  coming  in  the 
clouds  of  heaven,"  glorified,  triumphant,  lifted 


CHRIST  AND  THINGS  OF  LIFE     269 

far  above  the  earth  and  its  humble  life.  And 
so,  if  they  were  looking  for  Christ  at  all  that 
morning,  I  think  they  watched  the  morning 
clouds,  expecting  Him  to  come  down  the  re- 
splendent staircase  of  the  sunbeams  to  call  the 
nations  together,  and  vindicate  Himself  in  acts 
of  universal  judgment.  And  behold,  Jesus 
comes  as  a  fisherman,  standing  by  the  lakeside, 
busy  over  a  little  fire,  where  the  morning  meal 
is  cooking;  and  behold  Jesus  speaks,  and  it  is 
not  of  the  eternal  mysteries  of  God,  not  of  the 
solemn  secrets  of  the  grave,  but  of  nets  and 
fishing  and  how  to  cast  the  nets — the  simple 
concerns  of  simple  men  engaged  in  simple  tasks. 

No  wonder  they  did  not  recognise  Him. 
Once  more  the  Son  of  Man  comes  eating  and 
drinking,  and  even  the  eyes  that  knew  Him  best 
cannot  see  in  this  human  figure  by  the  lakeside 
the  only  begotten  Son  of  the  Father,  full  of 
grace  and  truth.  They  looked  and  saw  but  a 
fellow-fisherman,  cooking  his  meal  upon  the 
shore,  and  they  knew  not  that  it  was  Jesus. 

Think  for  a  moment  of  the  earthly  life  of 
Christ,  and  you  will  see  that  it  was  designedly 
linked  with  all  the  common,  and  even  the  com- 
monest, things  of  life. 

If  you  or  I  could  have  conceived  the  great 
thought  of  some  human  creature  who  should  be 
the  very  incarnation  of  God,  what  would  have 
been  the  shape  of  our  imaginings?    Surely  we 


270       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

should  have  chosen  for  this  earthly  temple  of 
the  highest  some  human  form,  perfected  in 
grace  and  beauty  by  the  long  refinement  of  ex- 
alted ancestry;  the  child  of  kings  or  scholars; 
the  delicate  flower  of  life  in  whom  the  elements 
were  so  subtly  mixed  that  we  should  recognise 
them  as  special  and  miraculous — so  we  might 
think  of  God  manifest  in  man.  But  God 
chooses  for  the  habitation  of  His  Spirit  a  peas- 
ant woman  of  Nazareth,  humble,  poor,  and  un- 
considered. 

If  we  could  have  forecast  the  training  of  such 
a  life  how  should  we  have  pictured  it!  Surely 
as  sheltered  from  the  coarseness  of  the  world, 
delicately  nourished,  sedulously  cultured;  but 
God  orders  that  this  life  should  manifest  itself 
in  the  house  of  the  village  carpenter,  out  of 
reach  of  schools,  in  a  little,  wicked  town,  under 
the  commonest  conditions  of  poverty,  obscurity, 
and  toil. 

If  you  and  I  could  have  imagined  the  in- 
troduction of  this  life  of  lives  to  the  world  how 
should  we  picture  that?  Surely  we  should  have 
pictured  it  coming  with  pomp  and  display  that 
would  at  once  have  attracted  all  eyes;  but  God 
orders  that  it  shall  come  without  observation, 
unfolding  its  quiet  beauty  like  the  wayside 
flower,  which  there  are  few  to  see  and  very  few 
to  love.  Commonness :  that  is  the  great  note  of 
the  incarnation  and  the  purposed  feature  of 


CHRIST  AND  THINGS  OF  LIFE     271 

Christ's  earthly  life.  He  sleeps  in  huts  where 
poor  men  lie;  He  wins  His  difficult  bread  as 
poor  men  win  it.  His  friends  and  disciples  are 
fishermen;  the  princes  of  His  nation  know  Him 
not,  and  when  He  lifts  His  hands  to  bless  the 
multitude  they  are  the  hands  of  the  workman, 
disfigured  by  daily  toil;  and  when  men  and 
women  touch  His  raiment  for  miraculous  heal- 
ing it  is  the  common  raiment  of  the  workman 
that  He  wears.  From  first  to  last  it  is  among 
the  common  things  of  life  He  moves,  amidst 
misery  and  want,  the  realities  of  disease,  suffer- 
ing, and  death ;  never  picking  His  path  to  avoid 
the  thorns  and  mire  of  life ;  by  preference  walk- 
ing on  the  roads  most  thronged  by  common  peo- 
ple ;  asking  no  better  title  than  that  sweet  and 
homely  title  of  the  Son  of  Man,  desiring  no 
loftier  commendation  than  to  be  called  the 
Friend  of  Publicans  and  Sinners,  imagining  no 
sweeter  witness  to  His  ministry  than  that  the 
common  people  hear  Him  gladly.  He  is  the 
people's  Christ,  the  Christ  of  Common  Life — 
that  is  His  distinction,  that  is  His  characteris- 
tic, that  is  His  claim. 

Think  of  these  things,  then,  and  you  will  be- 
gin to  see  why  it  was  that  Jesus  stood  upon  the 
shore,  as  a  simple  fisherman,  talking  to  fisher- 
men, and  so  like  themselves  that  they  knew  not 
that  it  was  Jesus.  He  reaffirms  His  fraternity 
in  common  life.     The  disciples  could  not  im- 


272       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

agine  that  as  possible;  nor  can  we.  And  why 
not!  For  two  reasons,  one  of  which  is  that  we 
have  forgotten  the  dignity  of  common  life. 
Dignity  is  for  us  almost  synonymous  with  some 
kind  of  separation  from  common  life ;  it  dwells 
in  palaces,  not  in  cottages ;  it  inheres  in  culture, 
but  is  inconceivable  in  narrow  knowledge,  and 
to  the  great  mass  of  men  it  is,  alas !  the  attribute 
of  wealth,  of  fine  raiment,  of  social  isolation. 
But  we  have  not  learned  even  the  alphabet  of 
Christ's  Gospel  unless  we  have  come  to  see  that 
the  only  true  indignity  in  human  life  is  sin, 
meanness,  malevolence,  and  small-heartedness, 
and  that  all  life  is  dignified  where  there  is  love, 
purity,  and  piety  in  it,  whatever  be  its  social 
category. 

I  read  the  other  day  that  it  is  probable  that 
the  very  mire  of  the  London  streets  contains 
that  mysterious  substance  known  as  radium,  the 
most  tremendous  agent  of  light  and  heat  ever 
yet  discovered  by  man ;  and  so  in  man  himself, 
however  low  his  state,  there  is  the  spark  of  God, 
an  ember  lit  at  the  altar  fires  of  the  Eternal,  and 
it  is  because  we  forget  this  that  we  forget  the 
dignity  of  common  life.  For  we  do  forget  it. 
We  may  make  our  boast  that  a  single  human 
soul  is  of  more  value  than  all  the  splendours  and 
immensities  of  matter;  but  in  our  actions  we 
treat  the  boast  as  a  mere  rhetorical  expression. 
There  is  nothing  so  cheap  as  men  and  women — 


CHRIST  AND  THINGS  OF  LIFE     278 

let  the  lords  of  commerce  answer  if  it  be  not  so. 
But  Christ  acted  as  though  the  boast  were  true. 
He  deliberately  inwove  His  life  into  all  that  is 
commonest  in  life.  He  has  made  it  impossible 
for  us — if,  indeed,  we  have  His  Spirit — to  think 
of  any  common  aspect  of  human  life  without 
thinking  of  Him. 

We  all  recollect  that  pathetic  and  striking 
saying  of  Abraham  Lincoln's,  that  God  must 
have  thought  a  good  deal  of  the  common  people, 
because  He  made  so  many  of  them.  Jesus 
acted  as  though  that  saying  were  true.  He  pre- 
ferred to  be  numbered  with  the  poor,  with  the 
humble,  with  the  obscure  toilers,  who  had  no 
inheritance  on  the  earth.  He  desired  not  to 
share  the  life  of  the  privileged,  but  preferred 
association  in  the  life  of  the  unprivileged.  He 
sought  not  what  all  men  seek — possessions; 
rather.  He  sought,  and  taught  His  followers  to 
seek  to  be  delivered  from  the  burden  of  posses- 
sions. It  was  the  divine  mission  of  the  Christ, 
who  was  Himself  a  root  out  of  a  dry  ground,  to 
show  how  the  Flower  of  the  Soul  could  grow  in 
the  common  soil  of  humanity,  where  no  man 
expected  grace,  or  perfume,  or  beauty.  And  so 
the  great  mission  of  Christ  is  to  make  us  see  the 
dignity  of  common  life,  and  the  Church  that 
forgets  this  has  neither  impulse  nor  mandate 
for  Christ's  work  among  men. 

And  then,  again,  there  is  a  second  reason  why 


S74       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

this  passage  startles  us ;  we  have  not  learned  to 
look  for  Christ  among  the  common  things  of 
life. 

**  Let  us  build  three  tabernacles/'  said  the 
wondering  disciples  on  the  Mount  of  Trans- 
figuration, and  the  speech  betrayed  a  tendency 
of  thought  which  was  in  time  to  prove  fatal  to 
the  Church. 

The  Christ  without  a  tabernacle,  the  free, 
familiar  Christ  of  the  lake  or  the  wayside  was 
everybody's  Christ;  but  the  moment  Christ  is 
shut  up  in  a  church  or  a  tabernacle  He  becomes 
the  priest's  Christ,  the  thinker's  Christ,  the 
devotee's  Christ,  but  He  ceases  to  be  the  peo- 
ple's Christ. 

I  remember  five  years  ago  standing  in  the 
great  Church  of  Assisi,  which  has  been  erected 
over  and  encloses  the  little  humble  chapel 
where  Francis  first  received  his  call.  You  will 
scarcely  be  surprised  if  I  confess  that  I  turned 
with  a  sense  of  heart-sick  indignation  from  the 
pomp  of  that  splendid  service  in  the  gorgeous 
church  to  the  thought  of  Francis,  in  his  worn 
robe,  going  up  and  down  these  neighbouring 
roads,  touching  the  lepers,  calling  them  ''God's 
patients,"  pouring  out  his  life  for  the  poor,  and 
I  knew  Christ  nearer  to  me  on  the  roads  that 
Francis  trod  than  in  that  Church  which  is  his 
mausoleum  rather  than  his  monument.  And  as 
I  felt  that  day  in  far-off  Umbria,  so  I  have  felt 


CHRIST  AND  THINGS  OF  LIFE     275 

to-day  in  England ;  my  heart  goes  out  to  Cath- 
erine Booth,  to  Father  Dolling,  to  these  Christs 
of  the  wayside,  and  it  turns  more  and  more  from 
the  kind  of  Christ  who  lives  in  churches,  and 
nowhere  else.  My  brethren,  will  you  let  me  say 
that  we  do  but  make  the  Church  Christ's 
prison  when  we  forget  that  all  the  realm  of  life 
is  His!  Oh,  you  good  people,  who  do  love  your 
Church,  but  often  think  and  act  as  though  the 
presence  of  Christ  can  be  found  nowhere  else — 
lift  up  your  eyes  and  see  this  Risen  Christ,  a 
fisherman  upon  the  shore,  busy  in  no  loftier  task 
than  to  have  a  meal  prepared  for  hungry  fish- 
ermen. Unlock  your  Church  doors,  let  Christ 
go  out  among  the  common  people ;  nay,  go  your- 
selves, for  it  is  there  that  He  would  have  you  be. 
Remember,  that  wherever  there  is  toil,  there 
is  the  Christ  who  toiled,  and  there  you  should 
be,  with  the  kind  glance,  the  warm  hand-grasp 
and  the  living  warmth  of  brotherhood.  Re- 
member, that  wherever  hunger  is,  there  is  the 
Christ  who  thinks  it  no  sacrilege  that  hands  that 
have  bled  upon  the  Cross,  and  laid  hold  of  the 
glory  of  God,  should  cook  a  meal  for  hungry 
men.  Remember,  that  wherever  there  is  buying 
and  selling,  there  is  the  Christ  interested  in  the 
draught  of  fishes,  ready  to  instruct  you  in  your 
business,  as  He  instructed  these  men  to  cast 
the  net  on  the  right  side  of  the  ship.  And  your 
religion  is  vain  if  it  does  not  enable  you  to  see 


276        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

Christ  in  the  counting-house,  in  the  'change,  in 
the  office,  in  the  warehouse,  as  truly  as  in  the 
church. 

Christ  stands  amid  the  common  things  of 
life ;  where  the  fire  is  lit,  there  is  He ;  where  the 
bread  is  broken,  there  is  He;  where  the  net  of 
business  gain  is  drawn,  there  is  He ;  and  only  as 
we  learn  to  see  Him  everywhere  shall  we  under- 
stand the  dignity  and  the  divinity  of  human 
life. 

^  ^  And  Jesus  said  unto  them,  Cast  the  net  on 
the  right  side  of  the  ship,  and  ye  shall  find. 
They  cast,  and  noiv  they  were  not  able  to  draiv 
it  for  the  multitude  of  fishes.^ ^ 

Here  is  another  strange  thing.  Christ  knows 
more  about  the  management  of  their  own  busi- 
ness than  they  do.  They  had  toiled  all  night  and 
caught  nothing ;  is  not  that  a  significant  descrip- 
tion of  many  human  lives  1  '  ^  Children,  have  ye 
any  meat!  "  asks  that  quiet  voice  from  the 
shore,  and  they  answer  ^^  No."  Is  not  that  yet 
more  pathetically  significant?  All  the  heart- 
break and  disappointment  of  the  world  cries 
aloud  in  that  confession.  Oh,  I  could  fill  an 
hour  with  the  mere  recital  of  the  names  of  great 
and  famous  people  who  have  toiled  through  a 
long  life,  and  as  the  last  grey  hour  came  over 
the  dim  sea  of  life,  ^^  brackish  with  the  salt  of 
human  tears,''  have  acknowledged  with  infinite 
bitterness  that  they  have  caught  nothing.    Lis- 


CHRIST  AND  THINGS  OF  LIFE     277 

ten  to  the  voice  of  Goethe,  ^'  In  all  my  seventy- 
five  years  I  have  not  had  four  weeks  of  genuine 
well  being  '';  to  the  confession  of  our  own 
famous  poet — 

*'  My  life  is  in  the  yellow  leaf, 

The  flowers,  the  fruits  of  love  are  gone; 
The  worm,  the  canker,  and  the  grief 
Are  mine  alone  " ; 

to  the  ambitious  and  successful  statesman,  who 
says,  ^ '  Youth  is  folly,  manhood  is  struggle,  old 
age  regret  " ;  to  one  of  the  most  brilliant  women 
of  genius  in  our  own  generation,  wife  of  a  still 
more  brilliant  husband,  who  cries,  ^^  I  married 
for  ambition,  and  I  am  miserable."  Surely 
there  is  some  tragic  mismanagement  of  the 
great  business  of  living  here.  Oh,  brother,  is  it 
true  of  you  that  after  all  the  painful  years  hap- 
piness is  not  yours  ?  You  have  no  meat,  no  food 
on  which  the  heart  feeds,  no  green  pasture  in 
the  soul,  no  table  in  the  wilderness,  and  the  last 
grey  day  draws  near,  and  will  find  you  still 
hungering  for  what  life  has  never  given  you. 

Learn,  then,  that  Christ  knows  more  about 
the  proper  management  of  your  life  than  you 
do.  ^'  Cast  your  net  on  the  right  side  of  the 
ship,"  speaks  that  quiet  voice  from  the  shore. 
And  you  know  what  happened.  These  men, 
poor  and  disappointed,  are  suddenly  enriched 
and  satisfied  when  they  rule  their  actions  by 
Christ's  word.    Guided  by  their  own  will  and 


278       THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

their  own  wisdom,  they  have  been  miserably 
poor  fishermen — they  have  caught  nothing. 
They  need  the  Master  of  the  tides  and  the  Lord 
of  the  deep  to  instruct  them.  The  moment  they 
submit  to  the  directions  of  Christ,  failure  be- 
comes victory,  and  success  comes  to  them  across 
the  dawn-lit  sea.  And  it  is  so  still.  Just  be- 
cause Christ  stands  among  the  common  things 
of  life,  He  knows  all  about  life,  and,  above  all. 
He  knows  where  the  golden  fruit  of  happiness 
is  found,  and  where  the  secret  wells  of  peace 
are. 

There  is  a  thought  which  overwhelms  me  at 
times — ^have  you  ever  felt  its  pain! — that  we 
know  so  little  about  life,  we  understand  so  little 
of  the  mechanism  of  our  own  nature.  We  are 
always  experimenting  and  always  going  wrong 
in  our  experiments.  But  Christ  knows;  He 
makes  no  mistakes.  Life  for  Him  is  no  experi- 
ment, no  riddle,  no  doubtful  enigma :  He  knows. 
And  His  summary  of  life  is,  ^'  In  the  world  ye 
shall  have  tribulation,  but  in  Me  ye  have  peace. 
Come  unto  Me,  and  I  will  give  you  rest.''  You 
may  think  you  know  all  about  the  business  of 
life;  test  your  knowledge  by  this  question, 
^^Have  ye  any  meatf  Is  the  heart  satisfied, 
and  the  soul  nourished  and  at  rest?  And  if  that 
test  declares  you  bankrupt  in  all  that  makes  the 
true  joy  of  life,  oh  listen  even  now  to  the  Voice 
which  speaks  as  never  man  spake,  and  ''  cast 


CHRIST  AND  THINGS  OF  LIFE    279 

your  net  on  the  right  side  of  the  ship,  and  ye 
shall  find.'' 

For  some  of  us  whom  God  has  called  to  be 
fishers  of  men  the  issue  is  yet  more  solemn.  We 
have  the  boat  and  the  nets,  all  this  elaborate 
organisation  of  the  Church,  but  have  we  caught 
anything  this  year?  Where  is  the  draught  of 
fishes  ?  Where  are  the  men  and  women  saved  by 
our  triumphant  effort  ?  I  will  make  my  humble 
confession,  that  for  five-and-twenty  years  I  have 
cast  the  net,  but  not  always  have  I  found  the 
right  side  of  the  ship;  only  lately  have  I  dis- 
covered how  easy  it  is  to  get  the  great  draught 
of  fishes  by  simply  going  to  work  in  Christ's 
way.  I  do  not  believe  in  the  indifference  of  the 
masses  to  religion ;  the  indifference  is  not  in  the 
masses,  but  in  the  Churches.  You  will  never 
catch  many  fish  if  you  stand  upon  the  shore  of 
cold  respectability,  and  wait  for  them  to  come; 
launch  out  into  the  deep,  and  you  will  find  them. 
Go  for  them,  that  is  Christ's  method.  Compel 
them  to  come  in,  for  remember  Christ's  ideal 
was,  as  Bishop  Lightfoot  so  nobly  put  it,  ^'  the 
universal  compulsion  of  the  souls  of  men."  And 
if  your  experience  is  like  mine,  you  will  find  that 
there  is  strangely  little  compulsion  needed  to 
bring  men  and  women  to  Christ.  We  have  not 
far  to  go  to  seek  the  lost  sheep ;  and  the  sheep  is 
more  anxious  to  return  to  the  fold  than  we  to 
open  the  gate  of  the  fold  to  receive  him.    One  of 


280        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

the  amazements  of  my  life  has  heen  to  discover 
with  what  readiness  men  will  respond  to  any 
real  and  sincere  effort  made  to  win  them  for 
Christ.  If  they  stand  aloof  from  the  Church  it 
is  usually  because  they  think  the  Church  does 
not  want  them.  I  ask  you  whether  you  really 
want  a  great  draught  of  fishes,  for  you  can  have 
them  if  you  want  them.  Christ  knows  the  busi- 
ness better  than  you  do;  and  if  you  will  come 
out  of  the  cloister  of  the  Church  and  seek  the 
people  in  His  spirit,  I  promise  you  that  very 
soon  you  will  not  be  able  to  draw  the  net  for  the 
multitude  of  fishes. 

^^And  Jesus  said  unto  them,  Come  and  dine/' 
Dine  on  what?  Not  the  fish  which  they  had 
caught.  They  had  caught  one  hundred  and 
fifty-three  great  fishes ;  but  notice,  Christ 's  fire 
was  kindled  before  they  came.  Christ's  fish  was 
already  laid  thereon,  and  all  they  had  to  do  was 
to  come  and  dine.  It  is  all  you  have  to  do,  all 
the  Churches  have  to  do.  Did  not  Christ  so  put 
it  in  the  parable  of  the  great  supper  ! — ' '  Come, 
for  all  things  are  now  ready.''  Is  not  the  last 
word  of  Scripture  the  great  invitation — ''  The 
Spirit  and  Bride  say  Come,  and  whosoever  will, 
let  him  come  and  take  of  the  water  of  life 
freely. ' '  Many  a  Church  cannot  say  to  a  hungry 
world,  ''  Come  and  dine,"  because  it  will  not 
let  Christ  prepare  the  meal.  It  will  not  live  in 
His  Spirit,  it  has  no  real  faith  in  His  Gospel : 


CHRIST  AND  THINGS  OF  LIFE    281 

it  does  not  understand  that  its  true  strength  is 
not  in  elaborate  organisation  or  worship,  but 
in  reliance  on  His  grace.  And  so  there  is  the 
table  covered  with  elaborate  confections  which 
are  not  bread,  and  when  it  says,  "  Come  and 
dine,"  men  will  not  come,  for  they  know  that 
there  is  nothing  there  for  them.  Let  Christ  pre- 
pare the  meal,  and  all  is  different  then.  When 
He  says,  ''  Come  and  dine,''  there  is  ''  enough 
for  each,  enough  for  all,  enough  for  evermore.'' 
And  as  Jesus  spoke,  I  think  there  flashed 
upon  the  memory  of  these  men  the  scene  when 
Jesus  fed  the  five  thousand,  and  by  that  mem- 
ory they  knew  their  Jesus.  No  one  else  had 
ever  spoken  like  that,  with  such  certainty  and 
such  authority.  And  the  same  voice  speaks 
even  now  to  your  hunger-bitten  soul,  to  your 
famished  heart,  ^'  Come  and  dine." 

''  Then  Jesus  taketh  bread  and  giveth  them, 
and  fish  likewise/^ 

There  is  no  mistaking  the  act,  it  was  a  sacra- 
mental act.  Here,  upon  the  lake  shore,  without 
a  church,  without  an  altar,  the  true  feast  of  the 
Lord  was  observed.  For  what  does  the  Holy 
Supper,  which  is  the  bond  and  seal  of  the 
Church's  fellowship,  stand  for,  if  it  is  not  for 
this,  the  sanctification  of  the  common  life? 
Bread  and  wine,  the  commonest  of  all  foods  to 
an  Oriental,  elements  indeed,  because  they  are 
necessary  to  the  most  elementary  form  of  physi- 


282        THE  EVANGELISTIC  NOTE 

cal  life,  tilings  used  daily  in  the  humblest  home 
— ^by  linking  Himself  imperishably  with  these 
commonest  elements  of  life,  Christ  makes  it  im- 
possible to  forget  Him.  Once  more  the  thought 
shines  clear — Jesus  among  the  common  things 
of  life.  And  then  there  comes  one  last  touch  in 
the  beautiful  story.  All  the  time,  while  these 
things  happened,  the  day  was  breaking.  Is 
there  one  of  us  long  tossed  on  sunless  seas  of 
doubt,  long  conscious  of  failure  and  disappoint- 
ment in  life?  Are  there  those  of  us  whose 
sorrow  lies  deeper  than  that  which  is  personal, 
sorrow  over  our  failure  in  Christ's  work,  pain 
over  a  life's  ministry  for  Christ,  that  has  known 
no  victorious  evangel  ? 

Turn  your  eyes  from  that  barren  sea  to  Him 
who  stands  upon  the  shore;  He  shall  yet  make 
you  a  fisher  of  men.  Turn  your  eyes  from  that 
bleak,  dark  sea  of  wasted  effort,  where  you  have 
fared  so  ill ;  it  is  always  dark  till  Jesus  comes,  it 
is  always  light  when  He  has  come.  There  is  a 
new  day  breaking  for  the  Churches — a  day  of 
widespread  evangelistic  triumph  that  shall 
eclipse  all  the  greatest  triumphs  of  the  past,  if 
we  will  but  go  back  to  Christ's  school,  and  learn 
of  Him  how  to  save  the  people.  And  to  each  of 
us  He  says  to-day,  "  I  am  the  li\'ing  bread;  I 
am  the  bread  of  life  come  down  from  heaven. 
If  any  man  eat  of  this  bread,  he  shall  live  for 
evermore."  ''  Come  and  dine."  Will  you  come? 


Important  New  BooKs  on  Foreign  Missions 


The  Edocational  Conouest  of  tke  Far  East.  By  Robert  E, 
Lewis,  M.  Ji.,  Cloth,  Net,  $t.OO. 

"This  is  the  first  adequate  presentation  in  any  langruage  of  the 
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Press. 

Evolution  of  the  Jananese,  Social  and  Psychic.  By  Sldnev 
L.   Gulick,  M.  Ji.,   Cloth,  Met,  $2.00. 

'The  author  deserves  unstinted  praise  for  the  care  and  study  ho 
has  devoted  to  his  subject.  .  .  Such  an  extended  research 
could  only  have  been  possible  by  reason  of  the  writer  having 
lived  so  long  among  the  people  he  descrioes."— AVw  York  Times 
Saturday  Reziew. 

India's  Problem.  Krishna  or  Christ.      By  John  P.  Jones, 
D,  D.,  Illustrated,  Clolh,  Met,  ft. SO. 
"All-round,  up-to-date,  vigorous,  sane  treatment  of  one  of  the 
greatest  questions  of  the  day."— Christian  Endeavor  World. 

The  New  Era  in  the  Philippines.  By  Jirthur  J.  Brown, 
D.  D.,  Illustrated,  Cloth,  Met,  $I.2S. 

"The  best  account  of  religious  conditions  in  the  Philippines  that 
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pines."'—77/^  Outlook. 

Missionary  Principles  and  Practice.  A  Discussion  of  Christian 
Missions  and  some  Criticisms  upon  them.  By  Robert  E, 
Speer,    8vo,  Cloth,  Net,  $1.SO. 

"This  is  a  great  book;  great  in  that  it  treats  with  splendid  insight 
and  directness,  and  also  with  splendid  enthusiasm,  the  fund- 
amental questions  of  mission  work."— 77/^  Young  Churchman. 

Outline  of  a  History  of  Protestant  Missions.  From  the  Re- 
formation to  the  Present  Time.  By  Gustav  Warneck, 
Svo,  Cloth,  Net.  S2.00. 

A  contribution  to  modern  Church  History.  Authorized  trans* 
lation  from  the  seventh  German  edition.  Edited  by  George  Rob- 
son,  D.D. 

"It  is  not  too  much  to  sav  that  the  book  is  indispensable  for  every 
student  of  missions."— Z/i^  Examiner  (N.  Y.) 

*fi^sions  and  Modern  History.  A  study  of  the  missionary  aspect 
of  some  great  movements  of  the  nineteenth  century.  By  Rob* 
ert  E.  Speer.     2vols.     Svo.,  Met,  S4.00. 

New  Forces  in  Old  China.  By  .Arthur  J.  Brown,  D.  D., 
l2mo..  Cloth,  Illustrated,  Net,  S'.2S. 

Among  the  Surmans.     By  H.  P.  Cochrane,  i2mo..  Cloth, 

Sf'SO. 

A  very  thorough  and  interesting  study  by  one  especially  equipped 
through  long  residence  among  the  people  described. 

FLEMING  K.  REVELL  COMPANY,  Publishers 


The    International    Pulpit 


A  New  Series  of  Sermons  and  Essays  representing  mines  of 
thought  and  illustration  from  some  of  the  keenest  thinkers  of 
the  day.     Issued  at  a  uniform  popular  price, — ;$i.oo  net. 

f 
The  Loom  of  Providence.    By  Robert  Mackenzie,  D.D.,  Rutgers 
Presbyterian  Church,  New  York. 

These  sermons  aim  to  call  attention  to  some  of  the  abiding  principles 
that  mark  God's  method  with  us  in  providence  and  in  grace,  and  to  do  so 
In  such  a  manner  as  would  enlist  the  attention  and  the  memory  of  active, 
chinking,  business  men. 

The  Modern  Crisis  in  Reiigion.    By  George  C.  Lorimer,  D.  D. 

Dr.  Lorimer  is  thoroughly  familiar  with  religious  conditions  both  at  home 
and  abroad,  and  moreover  has  the  happy  faculty  of  seeing  just  the  point  in 
the  problems  of  the  day  that  the  average  man  is  interested  in.  That  there 
is  a  crisis  in  the  affairs  of  organized  religion  is  certain,  and  what  Dr. 
Lorimer  has  to  say  is  from  broad  vision  and  right  to  the  point. 

City  Temple  Sermons.    By  R.  J.  Campbell.     (Joseph  Parker's 
successor.) 

"Almost  every  I*page  contains  paragraphs  which  it  seems  one  must 
guote — a  rare  compliment  to  any  man." — The  Observer^ 

"  The  keynote  is  that  of  personal  devotion  to  Christ  and  it  opens  doors 
of  suggestion  wherever  it  is  applied  along  the  line  of  human  experience 
and  need." — Tbe  Congregationaint. 

The  Reproach  of  Christ.     By  W.  J.  Dawson.     Introduction  by 
Newell  Dwight  Hillis. 

*•  The  sermons  are  marked  by  a  literary  quality,  combined  with  earnest 
evangelistic  zeal.  .  .  ,  Models  of  homiletic  construction." — Church 
£conomist. 

"  In  point  of  ethical,  spiritual  and  literary  merit  these  rank  among  the 
test  of  modern  sermons." — Outlook. 


The  Blind  Spot  and  other  Sermons.    By  W.  L.  Watkinson,  D.D. 

''Eighteen  excellent  sermons,  not  too  long,  learned  but  not  tiresome,  full 
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The  author's  knowledge  of  natural  history  makes  his  illustrations  fresh  and 
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"  These  are  all  sermons  for  the  times,  some  of  them  in  their  choice  of 
subject  and  method  of  application,  all  by  relation  to  the  permanent  needs 
and  longings  of  the  human  heart." — Congregationalist. 


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Christ'' s  Life  and  Teachings 


The   Crises  of   the   Christ.     By  G.  Campbell  Morgan,  D.D. 

Popular  Edition^  Third  Printings  cloth,  ^1.50,  net. 

"Remarkable  for  its  delineations  of  the  character  of  Christ  and  for  its 
description  of  influences  brought  to  bear  upon  him  on  many  important  and 
impressive  occasions  of  his  life." — Herald  and  Presbyter. 

The  Fact  of  Christ.  An  Irresistible  Appeal  to  the  Intellect. 
By  P.  Carnegie  Simpson.     4th  Edition^  cloth,  $1.25. 

"A  new  and  forceful  statement  of  the  fact  and  claim  of  Christianity. 
To  me  it  is  one  of  the  finest  statements  of  the  atonement  principle  that  I 
have  ever  read." — G.  Campbell  Morgan. 

The  Story  of  the  Nazarene.    A  Layman's  Life  of  Christ.     By 
Prof.  Noah  K.  Davis  (  Univ.  of  Va.)^  Maps  and  Illustrations, 
cloth,  ^1.75,  net. 
"  Probably  the  most  straightforward  and  readable  account  of  the  life  of 

Christ  issued.     It  puts  the  events  into  modern  setting  and  literary  form 

and  making  the  scenes  vivid  and  real.     .     .     .     Makes  the  story  accurate 

as  history  and  interesting  as  fiction." — IVatchman. 

Bible  Studies  in  the  Life  of  Christ.  Historical  and  Construc- 
tive. By  Henry  T.  Sell,  D.  D,,  paper,  25  cents,  net,  cloth, 
50  cents,  net. 

"  Practical,  historical  and  constructive  and  specially  suited  for  class 
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is  given.  Places  are  graphically  described.  The  course  of  events  is 
marked  out.  .  .  ,  All  is  done  in  a  brief,  concise  and  interesting  way." 
— Book  News. 

A  History  of  the  Preparation  of  the  World  for  Christ.  Fifth 
Edition,  Revised.  By  David  R.  Breed,  D.D.,  cloth,  gilt  top, 
;g2.oo. 

"In  broad  effectiveness  of  historical  portrayal  he  is  a  master.  He 
brings  to  bear  the  arts  of  the  pulpit  on  historical  narrative,  without  taking 
into  this  field  too  much  of  rhetorical  peculiarities." — S.  S.  Times. 

The   Principles  of  Jesus.     In  Some  Applications  to  Present 

Life.     By  Robert  E.  Speer,  cloth,  8octs.,  net. 

"  The  principles  of  Jesus  as  oearing  on  character  and  conduct  in 
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guide  of  life  to-day.  It  is  simple,  lucid,  and  wholesome,  suited  for  Biblo- 
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The  Twentieth   Century  New  Testament  in  Modern  English. 

New  One  Volume  Edition.     100,000th,  cloth,  ^i.oo,  net. 

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Chicago  Record'Herald. 

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Important  Biographies 

Jtuto biography  of  C,  H.  Spurgeon,  4  vols.  $10.00 
Compiled  from  his  diary,  letters  and  records.  By  his 
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The  Life  of  DwightL.  Moody.  -  -  -  2.50 
The  only  authorized  biography.  By  his  son,  W.  R. 
Moody.     Over  600  pages.     100  illustrations. 

Charles  G.  Finney.  An  autobiography.  -  1.25 
Fifty-first  edition  of  a  most  remarkable  work. 

Ji,  J.Gordon,     A  biography.  -        -        -        1.50 

With    letters  and  illustrative  extracts  from   sermons 
and  addresses.     By  his  son,  Ernest  B.  Gordon. 

John  Halt,  Pastor  and  Preacher.  -  -  1.50 
A  biography  by  his  son,  Thomas  C.  Hall,  D.  D. 

The  Life  of  Joseph  Parker.  -        -        -        1.75 

By  W.  Adamson,  D.D.  An  admirably  thrilling  sketch 
of  a  great  preacher. 

George  Miiller,  the  Jipostle  of  Faith.        -        .75 

With  portrait  and  illustrations. 

Pandita  liamabai:  the  Story  of  her  Life.  1.25 
By  Helen  S.  Dyer.  The  story  of  a  high  class  Hindoo 
woman's  devotion. 

Gypsy  Smith,  His  Life  and  Work.        -        -        1.50 
An  autobiography.     Introductions  by  Drs.  Alexander 
McLaren  and  G.  Campbell  Morgan. 

Catharine  Booth,  Mother  of  the  Salvation  Army  1.25 
By  W.  T.  Stead. 

Jlobert  Murray  McCheyne.  -       -        -        2.00 

Memoir  and  Remains.       Edited  by  Andrew  A.  Bonar, 
D.  D.     A  classic  of  devotional  literature. 

Letters  of  Samuel  Rutherford.  -  -  -  1.50 
Edited  by  Andrew  A.  Bonar,  D.  D. 

George  H.  C.  MacGregor.  A  devotional  life.  1.50 
By  Duncan  Campbell  MacGregor,  M.  A. 

Father  Chiniquy.     Autobiographical 

Fifty  years  in  the  Church  of  Rome. 4$rd  ed.  2.25 
Forty  Years  in  the  Church  of  Christ.  -        2.50 

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i 


Stories  of  Missions 

Illustrated.    i2  mo.     Cloth.    Each  $i.oo 

Daughters  of  Darkness  in  Sunny  India.    Bj  Beat- 
rice M.  Harband. 
A  charming  variation   araonpr  stories  from  the  mission  fields; 

•o  fascinatiuK"  is  the  presentation  that  the  reader  is  made  to  feel 

that  the  Hindu  and  Mohammedan  men,  women  and  children  are 

Jiving  personalities. 

The  Child  of  the  Ganges.    A  Tale  of  the  Judson 
Mission.     By  Robert  N.  Barrett. 
"A  story  never  to  lose  its  interest."— A^.  Y.  Observer. 

The  Sign  of  the  Cross  in  Madagascar,    By  J.J. 

Kilpin  Fletcher. 

A  pathetic  story  told  in  a  way  to  fascinate  and  instruct. 
ICin'da'Shon's  Wife.     An  Alaskan  Story.     By  Mr&. 

Eugene  S.  Willard. 

"From  beginning  to  end  holds  the  attention."— Pk^Z/V  Opinion. 
The  Cobra's  Den.    Stories  of  Missionary  Work  among 

the  Telugus  of  India.     By    Rev.  Jacob   Chamberlain. 

"Oneof  the  best  missionary  books  we  have  met  with;  full  of 
interesting  adventure  and  incident."— 27;^  Outlook. 

in  the  Tiger  Jungle.    Stories  of  the  Telugus  of  India. 

By  Rev.  Jacob  Chamberlain,  M.  D.,  D.  D. 

*'As  fresh  as  the  morning  and  as  sweet  as  the  rose,  full  of  tel- 
ling incident,  and  written  in  an  attractive  style." — Independent. 

On  the  Indian  Trail.     Stories  of  Missionary  Work 
among  the  Cree  and  Salteaux  Indians.    By  Egerton  R. 
Young. 
"No  one  who  wishes  a  clear  idea  of  the  needs  and  opportunities 

of  the  Indian  can  afiford  not  to  read  iW'— The  Independent. 

Korean  Sketches.     Life  in  the  Hermit  Nation.    By 

Rev.  James  S.  Gale. 

"Hopeful,  sympathetic  and  entertainingj   not  a  dull  page,  the 
illustrations  cast  real  Wghionxh.eX.zx.x.''^— Sunday  School  Times. 

The  Transformation  of  Hawaii.     How  American 
Missionaries  gave    a    Christian   nation  to  the  World. 
By  Belle  M.  Brain. 
"Will   be  read   with  thrilling  interest."— Z*^«V //Ifra/^f. 

tn  Jifric's  Forest  and  Jungle;  or  Six  Years  Among 
the  Yorubans.     By  Rev.  R.  H.  Stone. 
"A   model  of  clear,  informing,  flowing  style."— 77;«  A'^/x^xWAf 

Herald. 

Missions  in  Eden.     Glimpses  of  Life  in  the  Valley 
of  the  Euphrates.     By  Mrs.  Crosby   H.  Wheeler. 

The  Story  of  Uganda  and  the  Victoria  Nyanza  Mis- 
sion.    By  Sarah  Geraldine  Stock. 
"To  be  commended  as  a  good,  brief,  general  survey  of  the 

Protestant  missionary  work  in  Uganda."— /"/r^  Literary  World. 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company,  Publishers 


SCRIPTURE  BIOGRAPHIES 


BIBLE  CHARACTERS 
BY  ALEXANDER  WHYTE.  D.D..  EDINBURGH 

6  Vols.,  Each,  $1.25.    Set  Boxed,  $7.50. 

1.  Adam  to  Achan  4.    Joseph  and  Mary  to  James 

2.  Gideon  to  Absalom  5.    Stephen  to  Timothy 
S.    Ahithopel  to  Nehemiah              6.    Our  Lord's  Character 


HEN  OF  THE  BIBLE  SERIES 
EDITED  BY  J.  S.  EXCELL 

17  Vols.,  Each,  75  cents. 

1.  Abraham     Rev.  W.  J.  Deane,  M,A. 

2.  Daniel.    Rev.  H.  Deane,  B.D. 

3.  David.    Rev.  W.  J.  Deane,  M.A. 

4.  Elijah.    Prof.  W.  Milligan,  D.D. 

5.  Ezra  and  Nehemiah.    Rev.  Canon  Rawlinson. 

6.  Gideon  and  Judges.    Rev.  J.  M.  Lang,  D.D. 

7.  Isaac  and  Jacob.    Rev.  Canon  Rawlinson. 

8.  Isaiah.    Rev.  Canon  Driver,  M.A. 

9.  Jermiah.    Rev.  Canon  Cheyne,  DD. 

10.  Jesus  Christ  the  Divine  Man.    J.  F.  Vallings,  M.A. 

11.  Joshua.    Rev.  W.  J.  Deane,  M.A. 

12.  Kings  of  Israel  and  Judah.    Rev.  Canon  Rawlinson. 

13.  Minor  Prophets.    F.  W.  Farrar,  D.D. 

14.  Moses.    Rev.  Canon  Rawlinson,  M.A. 

15.  Samuel  and  Saul.    Rev.  W.  J.  Deane,  M,A. 

16.  Solomon.    Very  Rev.  F.  W.  Farrar,  D.D. 

17.  St.  Paul.    Rev.  Prof.  Iverach,  D.D. 


HEROES  OF  THE  BIBLE 
BY  F.  B.  MEYER.  M.A. 

Each,  12mo.,  cloth,  |1.00. 

1.  Abraham:  or,  The  Obedience  of  Faith. 

2.  Moses,  the  Servant  of  God. 

3.  Elijah,  Secret  of  His  Power. 

4.  Israel,  a  Prince  with  God. 

5.  Joseph:    Beloved,  Hated,  Exalted. 

6.  David:    Shepherd,  Psalmist,  King. 

7.  Jeremiah:    Priest,  Prophet. 

8.  Joshua,  and  the  Land  of  Promise. 

9.  Samuel  the  Prophet. 

10.  Zechariah:    The  Prophet  of  Hope. 

11.  John  the  Baptist. 

12.  Paul:    A  Servant  of  Jesus  Christ. 


TWO  CLASSICS 


BY  REV.  JAMES  STALKER 

Each,  l6mo,  cloth,  60  cents. 
The  Life  of  Christ.  The  Life  of  Paulc 

FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY,  Publishers 


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